


Harry Omens

by BanrionCeallach



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Crowley is soft for Aziraphale and kids, Found Family, Gen, Harry Potter Book timeline, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Inneffable Dads, M/M, TV Ineffable Husbands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2020-12-20 17:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BanrionCeallach/pseuds/BanrionCeallach
Summary: In which Harry Potter walks into a certain bookshop in London weeks before his eleventh birthday.Alternatively: In which Crowley takes one look at small ten-year-old parseltongue Harry and instantly decides that he and his angel have a new godson.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> 16/02/2020
> 
> I do not give permission for this fic to be copied from here to any other site. Nor do I give consent for this work to be hosted on any unofficial apps.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived in a house with a family who didn’t want him. He wore his cousin’s old clothes, he had glasses that were held together with sticky tape and he slept in a cupboard under the stairs. And then one day he was rescued, found out that he had magic and was very special and was taken to a magical school run by a wise and kind old wizard.

But it turned out that being magical doesn’t just make everything better. The magical world was dangerous and the old wizard was neither as wise nor as kind as the boy thought. The boy suffered much at the hands of evil because of the old wizards mistakes. He lost friends, he lost family and he lost the home he’d gained. In the end, however, he survived and was happy after a fashion.

That story is not this story.

In this story, the summer before he turns eleven, the boy is taken to London by his uncle along with his cousin. His uncle has just got a raise and wants to spend it on expensive electronics. His cousin is coming along, because he’s been promised a new video game. The boy is going, because his aunt is having her book club over and would rather that her despised nephew was out of the house. And besides, someone has to carry the bags.

In this story, the boy was denied dinner the night before because his aunt was in a bad mood and took it out on the nearest convenient target. So after tramping around London after his uncle and cousin, the boy is very very tired.

He trips.

He trips and the heavy bag he was carrying, containing the very new, very expensive electronic equipment, goes flying. It lands with a loud crash, the contents very clearly smashed beyond repair.

In this story, the boy’s uncle loses his temper. He loses it so badly and shouts and roars so loudly and so angrily that the boy is terrified. Because he can see murder in the man’s eyes as his uncle walks towards him.

In this story, Harry Potter turns and runs for his life, because he is very much afraid that if his uncle catches him that he might just kill him.

He turns and runs and doesn’t look back. His uncle doesn’t catch him. Eventually, while Vernon Dursley calls his wife in a panic to explain that the dratted boy is gone and he, Vernon, has no idea how to find him, Harry Potter ends up outside an old bookshop in Soho. He is cold and tired and hungry and it’s starting to get late.

While Petunia Dursley is cursing and shrieking at her husband to call the police and find the dratted boy immediately because she cannot afford for a certain wizard to find out that her nephew is missing, Harry Potter is trying the door of the bookshop.

In this story, while Petunia and Vernon Dursley are having extremely well deserved panics at the thought of anyone in authority finding out how they’ve been treating him, Harry Potter enters the old bookshop and meets a very big snake.

The very big snake is intrigued by the appearance of a young magical human who can speak the language of the serpent and says so. Harry Potter denies having any magic, because he is just Harry.

The very big snake, who is a very, very old demon, is very alarmed when halfway through their conversation Harry’s exhaustion catches up with him and the boy faints mid-sentence.

The last thing Harry sees that evening before his vision goes dark and he collapses, is the very big snake changing into a very lanky red-headed man.

In this story the Demon Crowley, Serpent of Eden, recognises a very badly treated child when he sees one. He is outraged, because despite his demonic nature he is genuinely fond of children. So he catches the fainting boy in his arms and carries him upstairs to the bedroom in the flat above the shop and tucks the child in.

In this story, Crowley spends the rest of the evening sitting in the chair next to the bed and trying to figure out what he’s going to the tell the owner of the bookshop when he gets back.

After all, there’s really no good way to explain to an angel that you’ve decide to kidnap a child for his own good.

Still, Crowley has six-thousand years worth of experience in talking Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, into going along with Crowley’s less than saintly ideas. He’s sure he can manage it again.


	2. The Beginning

As it turned out, Aziraphale did not make it back to the bookshop until quite late that night. Which was why Crowley, who had fallen asleep in the chair next to the bed, found himself being shaken awake by an extremely displeased angel.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale whispered, his tone of voice indicating that he wasn’t sure he actually wanted an honest answer, but was asking anyway. “Why is there a child in my bedroom?”

Crowley shrugged and got out of the chair. “He needed to get some sleep.”

“Crowley,” the angel whispered again, exasperation colouring his voice as he pulled Crowley out into the hallway and then gently closed the door so as not to wake the sleeping boy. “Why is there a _child_ in my _bedroom_?”

“Couldn’t let him sleep on the shop floor, angel. That’s bad for his health.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale snapped, having had enough of the demon’s glib answers because there was a _child _in his_ bedroom._ “What did you do?!”

Crowley affected an injured expression. “Nothing! Why is it that you always assume I’ve done something?”

“Because you usually have!” the angel whispered exasperatedly. “In this case, evidenced by the fact that there is a child in my bedroom!”

“Well it’s not as if you ever use it- all right, all right,” Crowley said, gesturing placatingly. “Look, he’s a runaway. He came into the shop earlier this evening. He was freezing cold and almost dead on his feet and he collapsed halfway through a conversation. I thought the . . . the smart thing to do would be to let him have a rest. Okay?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply and then paused, a puzzled look coming over his features. “I thought you were spending all of today as a snake? You said it was, er, that time of the century?”

Crowley sighed. “Yes, angel. And I was all set to have a good shed when the kid walked in and distracted me.” He looked at Aziraphale’s still puzzled expression and sighed again. “The boy’s a mage, angel. He speaks my language.”

The puzzled look on the angel’s face vanished, replaced by one of surprised comprehension. “Oh good Lord,” Aziraphale exclaimed. “It’s been a while since we’ve run into one of those humans, hasn’t it? I believe they’re calling themselves wizards and witches now.”

“Mmm,” Crowley hummed non-committedly.

“Well, no doubt his family are worried about his whereabouts. We can contact them as soon as he wakes up.”

“Ah,” Crowley said awkwardly. “About that, angel . . .”

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was not having a good day.

For the last ten years he had had a very complex, very powerful tracking spell keeping him informed of Harry Potter’s exact whereabouts. At approximately five o’clock on Saturday evening, the compass which contained the spell had briefly spun wildly, before it exploded in shower of magic sparks which then set fire to the carpet in Dumbledore’s study. That had been the old wizard’s first clue that things were not as they should be.

His second clue was a frantic message from Arabella Figg, which arrived while he was in the process of dousing his smouldering carpet, informing him that there were muggle policemen at the Dursley’s house and that they had visited her to ask if she had any idea where Harry was.

And thus, Albus Dumbledore discovered that the ten-year-old saviour of the wizarding world was missing.

To his credit, once the initial moment of shock wore off Dumbledore moved very quickly indeed. He travelled by Floo powder to Mrs Figg’s house, where he was obliged to spend a few minutes soothing the anxious woman’s panic and assuring her that everything was under control. Then he made his way to Number 4 Privet Drive. Once there, Dumbledore Obliviated the memories of several policemen and sent them on their way.

He did not feel that the general public should be aware that Harry Potter’s whereabouts were currently unknown. Despite the fact that wizarding society kept itself fairly separate, muggle current affairs did happen to trickle over eventually and he shuddered to think of the Daily Prophet’s next headline, should Harry Potter’s name appear on the BBC news as the subject of a missing child investigation.

Petunia Dursley had been first alarmed at the appearance of Dumbledore in her house and then, much to her annoyance somewhat relieved, as he had saved her from having to explain to a confused constable why she had not a single photograph of the nephew who had been living in her house since infancy.

It was she who explained to Dumbledore that Harry had behaved abominably to his loving uncle, purposely smashing a brand new television set and then running away from the mildest scold and worrying all of them half to death. Dumbledore felt that while Petunia was obviously editing the story slightly, questioning the reason for Harry’s absence beyond that would be a waste of precious time, now that he had established the fact that the Dursleys did not know where Harry was. So he accepted Petunia’s version of events with a nod, warned her to contact him immediately should Harry return and then left.

Once back at Hogwarts he attempted without success to scry for Harry’s location. Then he attempted a second time. On his third attempt, using some rare components which he’d been saving for an emergency, Dumbledore managed to get an approximate location. But since he’d already come to the conclusion that Harry was probably still in London, the result of the scrying spell was not as helpful as he’d hoped.

He was reassured by the fact that the boy was still alive to be scryed on. How long that would continue to be the case, Dumbledore did not want to speculate. Only extremely powerful magic could have succeeded in blocking his scrying from determining Harry’s exact location and there was a very limited number of people in the United Kingdom who had access to that kind of power. Among them, those whom Dumbledore could trust would have surely contacted him already. That left those he could not.

The old wizard groaned. This was an emergency of massive proportions. He would have to call on the Order of the Phoenix to organise a clandestine search. Wherever he was and whoever he was with, Harry was very likely to be in deadly danger.

* * *

Aziraphale opened the door and quietly walked over to the boy sleeping soundly in the bed. Crowley, who was a step or two behind him, suddenly twitching in agitation.

“Alright,” the angel said, gently placing his right palm against Harry’s cheek, “let’s see . . .”

Aziraphale Looked at Harry the way only an angel (or demon) can Look at someone. He saw the boy’s health (not great), his aura of magic (very strong) and his recent emotional state (panicked). He stared in wonder at the shield of pure love permeating the boy’s very skin. Then he Looked at the oddly shaped scar on Harry’s forehead.

The angel froze. Behind him, Crowley shivered as the temperature in the room plummeted, a sudden and terrible chill radiating from the Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden.

Aziraphale withdrew his hand. The expression on his face was that of pure outrage.

“Yeah,” said Crowley, and Aziraphale could hear matching hellfire-hot fury in the demon’s voice. “I was about to mention . . . that.”

“Who _dared_?” Aziraphale spat, the words coming from his mouth sharp as ice. “What disgusting monster put that . . . that thing in a child’s head. A demon?”

Crowley shook his head. “Don’t think so. Demons haven’t got the imagination for that. Except for me-“

“You would never!” Aziraphale exclaimed cutting him off. “Even at your worst, at your most demonic, you would never sink to something like this!”

Crowley smiled crookedly, though the Angel could still see the fury in his eyes. “Thanks Angel. I know that, but it’s good to hear you say so too. Anyway, as I was about to say, this has the hallmarks of humanity at *their* worst all over it.”

“You spoke to the boy,” Aziraphale said slowly, getting the urge to destroy something with his flaming sword under control.

_Where is my sword?_ he wondered. _I’d really like to have it right now_.

“Yeah. For a few minutes before he passed out.”

“Does he know?”

“Didn’t really get a chance to ask before he fell asleep,” Crowley answered. “But I doubt it. Pretty sure Harry thinks it’s just a weird scar. His parents are dead, Angel,” the demon continued. “Probably due to whoever did _that_ to him. He lives with some relatives, who even though he was obviously trying to be tactful, they still sound like utter shite. That’s how he ended up here. He was running from his uncle. He thought he was going to _die_, angel.”

Aziraphale looked at him. There was an almost pleading look in Crowley’s eyes now. The boy spoke the language of the serpent. That was a rare gift, the angel knew, even among the practitioners of magic. And Crowley had always been undemonically soft where children are concerned. All the way back to the Ark.

Aziraphale heaved a sigh. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that it would be irresponsible to just send the boy off with that thing in his head. We ought to miracle it out at least.”

“Exactly,” Crowley nodded, reaching into his pocket for his sunglasses. “Even with it miracled out he’s going to need a few days to recover,” he said reasonably, and Aziraphale could feel himself giving in. “You know how magic users are. We’ll just keep an eye on him. For a few days that’s all. Then we’ll find him someone to stay with and get him out of your hair. I promise.”

“All right. Just for a few days,” the angel echoed, idly wondering what kind of décor he should put in the spare room. Soothing colours, he decided. Perhaps he’d wait until Harry woke up in the morning. They could go for breakfast somewhere nice and discuss what he’d like. Maybe a nice tartan bedspread.


	3. The Search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for Harry begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited the last chapter slightly to fix some timing issues. Az returns to the bookshop late at night rather than early morning

**Hogwarts Castle, Scotland. Several hours after the disappearance of the Boy-Who-Lived.**

Minerva McGonagall sat in one of the ornate yet comfortable chairs in Albus Dumbledore’s study and gratefully accepted the glass of brandy that the headmaster handed to her.

“Any news yet?” she asked, before taking a delicate sip from her glass.

Dumbledore shook his head. “I am afraid not,” he said heavily. “Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody are checking the street where Harry was when he disappeared. Severus is attempting to scry his whereabouts again and the rest of the Order is doing what they can, but so far there is nothing conclusive.”

Minerva closed her eyes, trying desperately to stop her imagination from providing her with pictures of the horrible fate that James and Lily Potter’s little boy could be suffering even at that moment.

“But I think we should not waste energy distressing ourselves unduly.”

Minerva raised her head at the words and looked at Dumbledore with sudden hope. “Why? I thought- Albus, _have_ you heard something?” she demanded, gripping her glass of brandy very tightly.

Dumbledore raised a hand to forestall her questions. “I have not. But consider, if Voldemort’s followers had Harry and if-“ here Dumbledore paused a moment to gather himself before continuing, “if they have killed him, they would be crowing about it. We would soon find his body. Publicly, no doubt. The Dark Lord always loved making a show of his enemies. His followers are the same. The sheer fact that we have heard nothing yet is reason to hope. Also, from what my sources tell me, what’s left of Voldemort is currently hiding in a forest in eastern Europe.”

Minerva frowned. “You think it’s not him or his followers then? Who else could it be?”

“I think the Death Eaters _may_ not be responsible. And there are others for whom Harry would be a tempting target.” Dumbledore paused again and wiped his spectacles with a blue silk handkerchief. “There is also one other possibility which I pray may be the answer.”

“Which is?”

“It is rare, but there have been cases of children whose first indications of their magic involved temporarily making themselves invisible. If Harry’s fight with his uncle was upsetting enough, his own natural desire not to be found may be at the root of his disappearance. If so, we should be able to track him as soon as his subconscious loses focus on the spell.”

“But, shouldn’t that have happened already? It’s been hours. Surely an untrained child couldn’t hold a powerful subconscious spell for that long!”

Dumbledore shrugged. “That would depend on the child. James and Lily were two of the most talented students I ever had. It would not be a complete surprise for their son to be precocious when it comes to strength of magic. It may be that tomorrow morning we will find a perfectly fine ten-year-old who will need nothing more than a few days in bed and some chicken soup to deal with the after-effects of a night exposed to the elements.”

“I hope you’re right,” Minerva replied wearily. “I just wish there was something more we could do now.”

She looked around the study seeking some inspiration, when her eyes fell on the headmaster’s desk. It was a solid piece of furniture, carved out of polished oak. The surface was piled high with books and parchment. A quill with its accompanying inkpot was perched precariously on the edge and a stack of letters looked to be in danger of tipping onto the floor.

The idea struck Minerva McGonagall like a bolt of lightning and she almost choked on her brandy.

_The letters._

“Albus!” she coughed, trying to get her breath back. “The letters!”

Dumbledore looked curiously at her. “What letters?” he enquired.

“The _letters_, Albus,” she repeated, trying to force her scattered thoughts into words. “The school letters. The letters written by Ravenclaw’s Quill. The letters addressed to every child in this school and every child due to start this year. With their _precise_ address!”

“Ah,” said Dumbledore. He smiled crookedly. “I’m afraid I’m ahead of you there, Minerva. I’ve already attempted to alter Ravenclaw’s Quill and failed. It will not start to produce letters for at least another week, no matter what attempts are made to interfere with it. I suspect the spell on it was designed that way for security reasons when it was originally cast. The muggles were still burning people at that time, I believe.”

The sudden hope which had flickered in Minerva’s chest was doused thoroughly at these words and she took another disconsolate swallow of brandy. “Then there’s nothing we can do.”

“For now,” Dumbledore agreed. He reached out his hand and squeezed Minerva’s shoulder gently “But we must not despair. Things could look much brighter in the morning.”

* * *

**The Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon, England.**

Molly Weasley gently eased open the door of her youngest son’s bedroom and looked in. Ron was asleep and snoring, his legs and arms thrown out haphazardly under his duvet. A tiny sliver of moonlight coming in through the curtains illuminated the poster of his favourite quidditch team. Molly nodded to herself and then closed the door quietly. Then she made her way down through the stairs, stopping at each landing to check on her other children, all of whom were fast asleep and snoring quite as loudly as Ron.

Finally Molly padded softly into the kitchen and started to boil the kettle for a cup of tea. A noise from the parlour made her reach for her wand, but after a quick glance at the many-handed clock, she relaxed and fetched a second cup from the cupboard. The hand labelled Arthur had just swung from ‘Work’ to ‘Home’. A few minutes later he joined her in the kitchen and gratefully accepted a hot cup of tea.

“Has there been any news?” Molly asked, as she looked up into her husband’s tired eyes.

Arthur shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Molly. No one at the Ministry even knows that the boy is missing. At least, if they do, then they’re keeping quiet about it. And it was hard enough to make enquiries if anyone had heard anything without accidentally spilling the beans myself.”

“I understand why Professor Dumbledore doesn’t want it public,” Molly said. “People would certainly panic. But surely it would be better to have everyone looking for him. Arthur, when I think of what could be happening to him right now . . . He’s just a child the same age as Ron. Oh, that poor boy,” she finished and wiped her suddenly teary eyes. “His poor aunt and uncle. They must be worried sick.”

Arthur Weasley hugged his wife tightly and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll find him,” he promised her, trying to keep his tone as cheerful as possible. “Who knows, a few months from now, Ron could have Harry Potter as a dorm-mate in Gryffindor tower.”

* * *

**London, England.**

Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt waved his wand in a complicated spiral movement, watched as the tip glowed momentarily and then nodded in relieved satisfaction. “Moody!” he called to his associate, “I’ve got a trace.”

Alastor Moody was standing at the end of the street, surveying it with his magical eye. He grunted in response and then stumped over to Shacklebolt. “Me too,” he said. “Definitely looks like the boy worked some accidental magic.”

“Invisibility?” Shacklebolt suggested. The wand in his hand shook, indicating a direction. He set off down the street, Moody beside him. “Dumbledore said as much when he briefed me on the situation. Wouldn’t be the first time a runaway wished no one could find him. And when the runaway is a wizard . . .”

Moody frowned, his magical eye revolving wildly. “That wouldn’t explain nobody being able to scry his location. Accidental magic wouldn’t do that. At least,” he conceded thoughtfully, “not for very long. Someone else is involved in this. I can smell it.”

Shacklebolt shuddered inwardly at the implication, despite himself. “I hope you’re wrong, Alastor. If He has returned then we could be looking at a lot more missing people in the future.”

Moody’s frown deepened into a full blown scowl. “I told Dumbledore that one neighbour wasn’t enough to keep an eye on the boy. We’ve should have had him watched ‘round the clock till he was old enough to attend Hogwarts, but Dumbledore insisted that wasn’t necessary. And now look!”

“He couldn’t have known that this would happen,” Shacklebolt said fairly as they turned a corner and followed the faint trace of magic down a side street.

“That,” Moody hissed, “is the point of _constant vigilance_ Shacklebolt!” The older auror’s magical eye spun wildly again before settling and glowing slightly brighter. “That way you don’t get caught flat-footed when the Boy-Who-Lived takes it into his head to run off after a family argument!”

The two men continued following the faint magical trace as the night wore on. It took them through several more side streets and alleyways as well as a brief trip through the Muggle Underground before finally leading them to a particular street in Soho in the early hours of the morning, where it finally petered out.

Moody surveyed the street carefully, his electric blue eye swivelling in all directions. He was silent for a few moments and then growled in frustration. “Trail ‘s gone cold on me. What about you?”

Shacklebolt looked around at the muggle street, noting the different shop fronts. A bar, a few cafés, some clothing stores which probably referred to themselves at boutiques, and a large old bookshop on the corner with the legend ‘A Z Fell & Co Est 1803’ carved into the façade. He gestured with his wand one more time, but the tip stubbornly refused to light up. “Nothing. Dead end,” he replied, and instantly regretted his choice of words. He hoped very fervently that his near-future would not contain the task of informing Harry Potter’s family of the worst possibility.

* * *

**A Z Fell & Co, Soho, London, England.**

“Research?” Crowley complained as Aziraphale placed an old, very ornate and very heavy book in front of him. “At this time of night?”

“That -thing- in Harry’s head is both evil and magical in nature,” Aziraphale said firmly. “I’m not going to risk things going wrong because either of us just used an off-the-cuff miracle when a more detailed delicate approach was needed.”

Crowley nodded slowly. Aziraphale had a point. Miracles were generally more powerful than human magic, but they’d both had a few surprises over the millennia. Better safe than sorry.

“All right, angel. Guess we’d better get to work.”


	4. Breakfast

Harry Potter woke on Sunday morning feeling more rested than he had in years. For a moment he was very confused to find himself in a big comfortable bed under a thick warm duvet and not his cupboard. Then his memory of the previous evening returned like a brick to the head. Despite the warmth, Harry shuddered convulsively, an anxious twist settling in his stomach. He’d never seen Uncle Vernon that angry in his entire life. He didn’t know what would’ve happened if Uncle Vernon had caught him, but he was very sure he never wanted to find out.

_So_, thought Harry, _where am I now? Still at that bookshop?_

Harry sat up carefully, pushing aside the tartan duvet, and looked down at himself. Not only had someone tucked him into this very comfortable bed, they had also changed his clothes. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas which fit him perfectly. They were black with a pattern of snakes.

Harry peered myopically around the room, blinking in the morning sunlight. After a quick investigation of the bedside table, he found his glasses. Harry put them on and looked round again, this time taking in the solid old bookcase which was very full, the desk, the wardrobe and lastly the chair beside the bed.

Which was full of snake.

Harry went very still. _Alright_, he told himself, _you didn’t imagine the snake then_.

Had he imagined it talking? It had asked him his name. He’d told it about Uncle Vernon and the accident with the shopping. About his parents dying in the car crash and having to live with the Dursleys. It had been sympathetic and it . . .

_Had vanished when he’d started to faint. He remembered that too. The room had started to spin and Harry had lost sight of the snake. That was when the man had turned up, he thought. Harry had felt so tired and light-headed and his legs had given in. Just before he’d hit the floor, skinny but surprisingly strong arms had caught Harry and cradled him protectively against a lean chest. He’d looked up and seen a lot of red hair and some expensive looking sunglasses._

_“Sshh,” the man had said as Harry fought against his suddenly heavy eyelids, his vision growing dark. “It’s alright. You get some sleep kid. You’re safe here, I promise.”_

“And then I woke up here,” Harry said to himself. He looked at the snake again. It hadn’t moved.

“Are- are you asleep?” he asked.

There was no answer.

“Hello?” Harry tried. There was still no response. Harry looked closer at the snake. There was something odd about it. Snakes were said to sleep with their eyes open, but this one looked like it had something covering them. He leaned closer.

There was a faint cracking noise and Harry scrambled backwards as the snake began to move, wriggling this way and that. _Oh, _the boy realised watching as the film over the snake’s eyes moved and patches of scales seemed to loosen. _He’s shedding._

Harry waited, watching in fascination as the large snake wriggled out of the chair and around the floor, shedding ever more skin as it went. The whole process didn’t seem to take long at all and finally Harry found himself looking at a considerable length of sleek and shining black scales.

The snake turned its attention back to Harry and he looked into its large golden eyes_. Well,_ it said in a conversational tone, _I’m glad that’sss over with. How are you doing kid?_

“Um. Fine,” Harry replied carefully, noting that he had not in fact imagined the talking snake. “Uh, how are you?”

_Much better, thanksss, _the snake hissed, slithering towards him. _You hungry, kid?_

“Um,” said Harry again, not sure if he should answer. Then his stomach rumbled loudly. “A little,” he admitted. A thought struck him and he plucked at the sleeve of his pyjamas. “Do you know where my clothes are?”

The snake tilted its head in the direction of the wardrobe. _Have a look in there. You’ll find something that fitss._

The wardrobe did not have Harry’s clothes in it. What it did have was a selection of trousers, t-shirts and jumpers that were all in Harry’s actual size, as well as several pairs of what looked like brand new trainers. Harry stared for a moment at the contents of the wardrobe, the looked back at the snake. It rolled it’s eyes and muttered something about ‘_overdoing it’_.

_It's alright, _the snake assured Harry, _you can pick whatever you’d like. Just do me a favour and try not to pick anything tartan. _It paused a moment and then added, _please._

Harry was mildly worried about accepting brand new clothes from a complete stranger, (especially since that stranger was either a talking snake, or a friend of the talking snake), but he decided that if he had to run again, he’d rather do it in clean clothes and shoes with no apparent holes. So he grabbed whatever was closest and changed out of the black pyjamas. When he was done, and wearing clothes that actually fit properly for the first time in years, he turned back to face the snake.

It let out a long-suffering sigh.

_Tartan sockss? Really?_

Harry shrugged. They’d been the closest pair to hand. “What’ve you got against tartan?” he asked.

_Nothing_! The snake protested. _C’mon kid, let’s go get breakfast_.

The snake slithered out into the hallway, towards an open door at the end of the passage. Harry sniffed, catching the smell of frying bacon, and his mouth began to water. It had been quite a while since his last meal and his stomach was starting to let him know how displeased it was at this state of affairs. So he followed the snake and peered through the open door, still ready to run.

The room was a small kitchen. Harry’s attention was immediately claimed by the frying pan that lay on the hob, sizzling cheerfully. The smell of frying bacon that he’d noticed in the hallway was coming from it.

Harry didn’t _quite_ have a heart attack when a loud cheerful voice exclaimed “Oh, you’re up already, Harry! How are you feeling?”, but it was a near thing.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the owner of the voice, a stocky man in a waistcoat and rolled up shirtsleeves, with a head of blond curls so pale that they were almost white. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you alright dear?” he asked contritely.

“Fine!” Harry gasped, struggling to get his breathing under control. How had he not noticed the man? “Just fine. Who are you?”

The man smiled at him. “My name is Aziraphale. You fainted in my bookshop last night and my friend brought you up to the flat. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“Yes, please,” Harry replied politely. Some of the anxious feeling in his stomach eased. So he _was_ still in the bookshop. Or, above it anyway. That was good to know. 

Aziraphale smiled again and busied himself with filling a kettle and Harry relaxed further. He didn’t know why but something about the bookseller gave him a feeling of safety and comfort.

_Angel,_ the snake hissed. _Your bacon iss burning._

“What?” Aziraphale exclaimed. “Oh bother!” He set the kettle down and turned his attention back to the frying pan, which had indeed begun to smell a little of overdone rashers. “Crowley, be a dear and sort the tea, will you?”

_Ssure thing, angel._

Harry stared as the large black snake began to slither upwards as if it was climbing some invisible wall. As it moved it grew larger and its scales shifted and changed into skin and cloth and hair.

A few seconds later a skinny redheaded man in black clothes and expensive sunglasses was grinning toothily at Harry while setting the kettle to boil. “Hallo again,” he said cheerfully.

* * *

Half an hour later Harry was on his second cup of tea and had eaten far too much bacon. He hadn’t thought it was possible to eat too much bacon, but he was discovering that he’d been wrong. Still, it was much, much better than the painful emptiness that was being hungry.

Harry looked across the kitchen table at Aziraphale and Crowley. The blond man had eaten almost as much bacon as Harry, but Crowley had only drank from a small cup of very black coffee which was still half-full. 

“So, you’re . . . wizards?” he asked curiously.

“Not precisely, my dear,” Aziraphale replied. “_You _are a wizard. The magic Crowley and I have access to is . . . somewhat different.”

“Me?” Harry said disbelievingly. “I’m not magic. I can’t be. I’m just Harry.”

“You can and you are,” Aziraphale said. “Harry, if you were not a wizard, a special type of wizard at that, then you could not have understood Crowley while he was a snake. All a non-magical human would have heard was hissing. But you could and you did understand.”

“You must’ve noticed other things,” Crowley added. “Anything odd or weird happen to you before?”

_Like meeting a man who turns into a snake? _Harry thought. _Not really._

But then a memory came back to him and he frowned. There had been a couple of times when strange things had happened to him. Like the time Aunt Petunia had cut his hair so short he’d been practically been bald and it had grown back almost overnight. Or the time Dudley and his gang had been chasing him and Harry’s desperate jump to safety had ended up with him on the school roof.

“See,” Crowley said triumphantly when Harry admitted to having a experienced a few odd things after all. “You are a wizard. I can always tell.”

“You do have a certain affinity, it’s true.” Aziraphale smiled affectionately at Crowley.

“Okay,” Harry said. He swallowed the last of his tea. “So, what do I do about it?”

“I expect you’ll be getting a letter from school about it soon,” Aziraphale mused. He turned to Crowley. “What was the name of that place in Scotland, dearest? Something to do with pigs?”

“Hogwarts,” Crowley supplied. “Britain’s biggest school of magic. Or at least it was, last I checked. Haven’t been there since that business with whatshisname – you know, the one with the staff?”

“Oh yes, how time does fly. He was quite put-out with you wasn’t he?”

“Serves him right for trying to summon me.”

“Um,” said Harry. “A magic school?”

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said enthusiastically. “A place of learning where you’ll learn to use your gift as well as meet other children like yourself. As I said, I expect you’ll be getting a letter from them any day now.”

“Aunt Petunia said they were sending me to the local secondary school. It’s called Stonewall.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

“Is Hogwarts where you learned magic?” Harry asked. He thought he might like to know how to turn into a snake.

Crowley shook his head. “Nah. We were home-schooled, I suppose you could say.”

At the mention of the word home Harry’s stomach sank. “I don’t think I can go unless my aunt and uncle say so. And they won’t. Aunt Petunia hates anything to do with magic. She wouldn’t even let my cousin Dudley have a magician at his birthday party.” Harry poked at a remaining scrap of bacon with his fork. “And they’re going to be really mad at me for running off when I get home. I won’t be allowed out of the house for months.”

The two adults exchanged glances. “My dear,” Aziraphale said, his voice very gentle, “would I be correct in saying that your home life is not ideal?”

“Um,” said Harry again, because how was he supposed to answer a question like that? “It’s . . . I mean . . . it’s fine really. Lots of people don’t have a roof over their head at all.”

There was another exchange of glances.

“Uh huh,” Crowley drawled. “You know your uncle and aunt would get into a lot of trouble if people found out they were making you sleep in a cupboard, right?”

Harry flushed. He’d forgotten that he’d told Crowley about the cupboard. “I told a teacher before. She came to the house and Aunt Petunia talked to her. Then I got in trouble for lying.” He frowned. “How do you know I’m not lying?”

Crowley took a miniscule sip of his coffee, which in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics, was still steaming. “I know a liar when I sssee one,” he said, a small hiss seeping into his words. “And you’re not one.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to go back,” Aziraphale said carefully. “You do have other options.”

Harry blinked. “I can’t just not go back,” he objected, thinking about how much trouble he’d be with his aunt and uncle if he didn’t. “I didn’t mean to run away from Uncle Vernon like that. But he was so angry and I just . . . I just . . .” He trailed off. The memory of Uncle Vernon’s enraged roar kept coming back to him.

“Was afraid,” Aziraphale finished for him.

“Yeah,” Harry whispered.

“Well, if you want to return to your aunt and uncle, you can,” Aziraphale said. “That’s your choice. But if you don’t, we’ve got a spare bedroom that’s just been decorated.”

“With tartan,” Crowley muttered into his coffee.

“I don’t know,” Harry said hesitantly. “I really should go home.” He looked at Aziraphale. “Thank you,” he said, “for the clothes. And the breakfast. It’s the best I’ve ever had.”

“You’re very welcome, my dear.” Aziraphale smiled, and Harry caught a glint of steel in his eye. “If you’re set on going back, Crowley and I will escort you home after lunch.”

“Right,” Crowley said casually, “and if you’ve got a phone number for your aunt I’ll give her a call and let her know to expect us.”

Harry nodded and reeled of the Dursleys’ phone number. Crowley grinned at Aziraphale who smiled back as if the two of them were enjoying a private joke.

“I’ll just give them a call while you two are doing the wash-up. Be right back.”


	5. Number 4 Privet Drive

The phone was answered on the second ring. Crowley didn’t give whoever was on the other end time to answer. Before they could say anything he hurled himself through the atoms of the phoneline. Seconds later he found himself flying out the other end and into a hallway which screamed ‘upper middle class’.

This was followed by a literal scream from the person who had answered the phone. Crowley found himself confronting a boy of about Harry’s age who was staring at him in astonishment.

_Ah, _thought Crowley, _this must be Cousin Dudley. _

Crowley snapped his fingers and Dudley froze, along with the ticking of the hallway clock. Crowley regarded the boy thoughtfully. He had planned something inventive for whoever answered the phone, but that had been based on the assumption that it would be Harry’s aunt or uncle. Objectionable though Cousin Dudley probably was, he was only ten years old and following the example of his (terrible) parents. He still had time to learn how not to be a total shit and in Crowley’s professional judgement, did not quite deserve demonic vengeance.

So Crowley turned away from Dudley and surveyed the hallway. The front door at one end, probably with a porch outside, identical to every other porch on every other house on the road. Nothing that would stand out, Crowley was sure. At the other end of the hallway there were three doors, two on one side and one on the other. At the moment however, Crowley was not interested in where they led. His attention was entirely claimed by the polished wooden stairs. More specifically, by the cupboard built into it.

Despite himself, Crowley’s hands clenched into fists for a moment, his nails biting into the palms of his hands. Then he walked forward and wrenched open the cupboard door. And stared at the contents, appalled.

The cupboard was big enough that a pre-teen boy could probably just about stand upright in it. Just.

A lightbulb hung loosely from what could charitably be referred to as the ceiling. Instead of a family’s collection of shoes and wellingtons, a single thin mattress had been stuffed onto the cupboard floor. There were two thin blankets covering it. A collection of very worn clothing was piled onto the one remaining shelf.

Crowley crouched down and pulled gingerly at the blankets. They came away from the mattress, exposing several springs which has long ago escaped its confines. They also exposed more than a few spiders.

The entire space smelled extremely musty. Crowley was uncomfortably reminded of the stale gust of air that followed the opening of an ancient tomb.

_“It’s . . . I mean . . . it’s fine really. Lots of people don’t have a roof over their head at all.”_

Harry’s hesitant words echoed in the demon’s mind. Crowley could feel his nails lengthening and sharpening and he knew that if he were to take off his sunglasses and look in the mirror he would not be able to find the whites of his eyes.

He stood up, stepped back, and slammed the cupboard door shut so hard that it rattled on its hinges.

Crowley stood in the hallway for a few moments, contemplating the various ways he could make the lives of the owners of this house an absolute misery. Some of them were quite complex.

Eventually he forced himself to focus. Harry’s cousin had answered the phone, therefore his aunt and uncle must be elsewhere in the house. Crowley considered his options for a moment and then decided to investigate upstairs first.

Upstairs turned out to consist of three bedrooms, a bathroom and another cupboard which when Crowley opened it, revealed a hot water tank. Upon being regarded balefully by a demon, it spontaneously developed half a dozen slow leaks.

The first and second bedrooms which belonged to Harry’s aunt and uncle and his cousin respectively, made Crowley much angrier than he already was. They were big, comfortable, had double beds in each, and although Dudley’s could not be said to be tidy, it was clean and spider free. It was the third bedroom however, which catapulted Crowley from merely angry to boiling with wrath. It was full of toys, most of which were either slightly damaged or outright broken. Quite a few had a large D scrawled on them.

The large double bed looked like it had never been slept in.

“A ssspare bedroom,” Crowley hissed to the empty air, glaring like only a serpent could at the comfortable bed and the collection of old, discarded and damaged toys. “They’re cramming the kid into that disssgussting cupboard downstairs and their own boy has a _ssspare bedroom!”_

There had not been a single toy or book in the cupboard under the stairs.

“Okay,” Crowley muttered to himself as he headed back down the stairs. “Harry’s not coming back here. Wasn’t really gonna let him come back anyway, except maybe for an hour just collect his stuff, but now? No way. Not gonna make him go near these people ever again.”

“He wants to go back,” Crowley rambled, arguing with himself as he headed towards the kitchen. “And free will, yeah, that’s important. But, human kids aren’t allowed a hundred percent free will anyway. Their brains aren’t ready for it. That’s why they’ve got adults to look after them. Anyway. Not going to keep the kid if he doesn’t want us to. Just not going to let him come back here. That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it? Keep him out of a dangerous situation? I can do the right thing if I want. I’m retired.”

Harry’s aunt and uncle were not in the kitchen. Crowley took the opportunity to work off some of his temper by loosening the screws in every appliance and breaking the temperature control of the freezer. As an after-thought, he jammed the volume control on the radio to Obnoxiously Loud.

Finally, after briefly investigating a room that he suspected the mistress of the house referred to as the parlour, he made his way to the living room and found the frozen forms of Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

Looking at them, Crowley hesitated. It had been a long time since he’d come across a human who he personally had wanted to throttle and now there were two right in front of him. Vernon was sprawled on a large couch, frozen in the act of picking up a mug of coffee. Petunia was standing by the fireplace, arms crossed and mouth open. Crowley suspected from her expression that his time-stop had interrupted the start of an argument.

He looked at the fireplace behind her and frowned. Up on the mantelpiece were various picture frames containing family photos of the Dursleys. Dudley at various ages featured heavily.

Harry wasn’t in any of them.

“Like he doesn’t exissst,” Crowley muttered. He drew in a breath, the air hissing between his teeth. Then he turned back to the human couple.

“What should I do with you two?” he wondered. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got _ideasss_, but right this second I should probably be a little more practical. Sso, information, I guess.”

Crowley snapped his fingers and Petunia and Vernon began to breathe again. Their eyes, however, remained vacant and unfocused.

“Petunia Dursley?” Crowley asked, just on the extremely slim chance that he had the wrong woman.

“Yes,” Petunia replied in a flat monotone.

“Good. I want answers. Tell me everything you know about Harry Potter. For sstarters, how he got that scar on his forehead.”

* * *

“I’ll do the wash-up,” Harry volunteered as he helped Aziraphale clear away the plates.

Aziraphale smiled at him. “Thank you my dear, that’s very kind of you. But you’re a guest in my home, there’s no need to put yourself out.”

“I don’t mind,” Harry protested mildly. “I always do the wash-up.”

For a second, Harry noticed an odd look in Aziraphale’s eyes, but it vanished before he could identify it. Then the bookseller smiled at him again. “Well, since you insist. I’ll dry.”

The two of them together made quick work of the chore and it wasn’t long before they were finished. Harry picked up the last of the now clean dishes, a cup with a handle that was shaped to look like wings, and began to hand it to Aziraphale. However, the oddly shaped handle was awkward and Harry’s hands were still covered with soapy water. The cup slipped from his grasp and shattered on the floor.

Harry felt the blood drain from his face. “I’m sorry! I’m s-sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to, honest!” He dropped to the floor and reached for one of the broken pieces, then flinched violently when Aziraphale grabbed his wrist, an expression of alarm on his face “I didn’t mean to!” Harry repeated desperately as his breathing started to quicken.

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale said gently, “It’s quite alright. Don’t touch the pieces, you’ll cut yourself.” He let go of Harry’s wrist and snapped his fingers. The cup pieces jumped back together. “There,” he smiled. “No harm done.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeated again in a whisper. He felt odd, cold and hot at the same time and his hands seemed to be shaking. Harry looked up at Aziraphale and to his inexplicable relief saw only puzzlement and concern in the man’s face.

“Oh. Oh dear,” said Aziraphale, as if he’d suddenly worked something out. “Harry, sit down a moment will you?” he asked.

Harry obeyed. He sat as still as possible and tried not to flinch when Aziraphale sat down opposite him and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Harry,” Aziraphale said, his voice still very gentle, but now with an undercurrent of firmness. “I’m going to say something very important and I want you to listen to me. Alright?”

“Yes,” Harry replied, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice.

“Good. Listen closely, because this really is very important.”

Harry nodded, feeling his stomach twist anxiously, a lump in his throat and a low buzz in his ears.

“Here it is then,” said Aziraphale. “You didn’t break the cup on purpose. It was an accident. You are not at fault and I am not angry with you. Do you understand, Harry?”

Harry tried to answer but couldn’t. The lump in his throat seemed to get worse and tears were pricking at the corners of his eyes. He could feel his face flushing. “I didn’t mean to,” he managed to say again. “Really, I didn’t.” He wasn’t talking about the cup anymore.

“Yes, I know. It was an _accident_, Harry. They happen to everyone.” Aziraphale paused and then said, “It was very wrong of your uncle to react the way he did, no matter how upset he was. You know that, don’t you?”

Harry shrugged. “It was a _really_ expensive television,” he said awkwardly, unsure why he was defending Uncle Vernon.

Aziraphale shook his head sadly. “Harry, that doesn’t matter. It’s the duty of adults to protect the children for whom they are responsible. Not only did your uncle fail to protect you, he actively put you in fear.” He paused again and then said, very softly, “Are you _sure_ you want to return to your aunt and uncle?”

Aziraphale’s gaze was filled with understanding and seemed impossibly kind. Harry’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, before he gave into the overwhelming urge to tell the bookseller exactly how he felt.

“I don’t! I don’t ever want to go back! But I can’t stay with you. People might think you and Mr. Crowley kidnapped me and then the police would be called and I’d have to go back anyway and I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me. You’ve been kinder to me than anyone else I’ve ever met,” he finished, breathing hard.

“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale murmured. Now he looked heartbroken. “You don’t have to worry about me, or Crowley for that matter. We’re quite capable of taking care of ourselves.” He held up a hand and snapped his fingers. “Magic, remember?”

“Yes, but that means the police would be even more trouble!” Harry protested. “Doesn’t it? And, Mr Crowley’s calling Aunt Petunia now. She’ll know where I am already.”

“Ah, no, in point of fact,” Aziraphale assured him. “Harry, please believe me when I say that if you wish to stay with us, the police will not be a problem. Neither will your aunt and uncle.”

Harry’s heart pounded. “You promise?” he asked, trying to keep the hope he was feeling out of his voice. The possibility of never having to return to Number Four, Privet Drive was staggering.

“I promise.”

Harry drew a deep breath. “Okay,” he said shakily. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

Aziraphale beamed at him and opened his mouth to reply.

He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Crowley.

“Angel!” Crowley called, striding into the kitchen. “Change of plans!” He turned to Harry. “Kid, I am absolutely a fan of free will, really, the biggest, but I’m sorry, we are not letting you back in that house for a second.”

Harry blinked. “Okay.”

“Seriously don’t argue- what?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Harry’s decided he’d like to stay with us for a while.”

“Oh,” Crowley said. “Right. Well then. Good. Problem solved.” He grinned widely at Harry. “Want to learn how to be a snake?”

“Crowley, absolutely not! He’s not even started school!”

“Oh come on, angel! Don’t be a spoilsport.”


	6. Interlude: Heaven and Hell

Beelzebub leaned against the railing and waited. Some moments later the sound of thunder echoed somewhere off to their right.

Beelzebub glanced over. The Archangel Gabriel stood next to them, idly wiping nonexistant dust off the sleeves of his extremely well-tailored suit.

“So?” he asked in a tone which heavily implied he had much more important things to be doing. “What’s up?”

“Itzz the traitorzz,” Beelzebub replied, unable to keep their idiosyncratic tic out of their voice.

Gabriel stiffened. “I have no idea who you mean, Beez. There are no traitors.”

The Lord of the Flies rolled their eyes and sighed. “Look Gabriel, juzzt because all of Heaven iz pretending that the whole mezz never happened doezzn’t mean that all of Hell iz.”

Gabriel didn’t look at them and Beelzebub heaved a bigger sigh. “For Hellz zake Archangel. Crowley and Azzziraphale are who I am referring to.”

“Don’t know anyone by that name, Beez,” Gabriel insisted stubbornly. His eyelid had started to twitch.

“Zzure you don’t.”

There was a moment of silence as they both stared straight ahead.

“Hypothetically,” Gabriel said eventually, “if some beings by those names did exist, why would I care about it?”

“You mean bezidez the fact that they’re zomehow immune to the primal forzez of above and below that would deztroy the rezzt of uz?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gabriel said awkwardly, experiencing a vivid recollection of Aziraphale spitting Hellfire at him. “Besides that.”

Beelzebub frowned at him. “We’ve had agentz watching them. They’re up to zomething. They’ve been looking after a child. A boy. He’zz been ztaying in the angel’z bookzhop.”

“And again, I care because?”

“The lazzzt time they were looking after a human child they zztopped the apocalypzze,” Beelzebub snapped, suddenly buzzing in agitation. “Or have you really forgotten how they made a fool of you?”

“Now I wouldn’t say that,” Gabriel protested, a faint edge in his voice. “I’m pretty sure we both had to do a little back-peddling that day, didn’t we?”

“Oh zo now you remember,” Beelzebub muttered under their breath.

“Look, Beez,” Gabriel said, “whoever this kid is, it’s not like he’s another antichrist. Probably just a normal human kid.” He sniffed. “Even our intel knows your serpent is soft about the smaller humans.”

“He izz not my zzerpent!”

“Yeah, yeah. Still soft on the small ones though. Why is that? Bit odd for one of your guys, I’ve always thought.”

“Yez well. Curiouzity’s alwayz been a problem when it comez to Crowley.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me? What’s curiosity got to do with it?”

Beelzebub shifted uncomfortably. “Humanz have got to be old enough to know the differenz between right and wrong to end up Below. Zo, not that many kidz. Almozt none in fact.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to reply and then closed it as the implications of the statement occurred to him. “Ah,” he said finally.

Beelzebub decided not to mention that the few children who ended up in hell disturbed even the demons.

“So . . .” Gabriel prodded.

“Zo Crowley’s too curiouz for hiz own good. Alwayz haz been. He never ztopz azking queztionz. Itzz why he Fell.”

Gabriel blinked “_Really?_” he asked, momentarily distracted. “I wonder wh- Ah, no, never mind, please continue.”

“_Zo_,” said Beelzebub with emphasis, tactfully ignoring what Gabriel had been about to say, “little humanz azzk many queztionz. Juzt like the Zzerpent. He’zz been zoft on them ever zince Eve had the very firzt one.” They sniffed contemptuously. “Itz almozt like he dotez on the little beaztz.”

“Then aren’t you worrying over nothing?” Gabriel pointed out. “Your shitty demon and,” he winced and the continued, “my shitty angel are temporarily playing house with a human. Probably a very normal human that they’ll get bored of and find other humans to do the looking after of in a week or so.”

“We don’t _know_ that for zzure.”

“Alright, alright,” Gabriel gave in. “I’ll have my guys keep an eye on the situation. If anything mutually interesting turns up, we’ll be in contact.”

“Likewize,” Beelzebub agreed. The earth opened up beneath them and they vanished.

“Huh,” Gabriel said to himself as the echoes died away. “Fell for asking questions? Now why is that familiar?”


	7. Settling In

Harry spent the rest of that Sunday morning in a happy daze. The knowledge that he need never see the Dursleys again warmed him like an cosy inner fire. He was, at first, still mildly worried that his presence would be a problem because surely Aunt Petunia would have the police looking for him? But Crowley, when Harry asked about it, had assured him that Aziraphale was correct and that it wouldn’t be a problem. Since he was talking to a man who could apparently turn into a snake whenever he felt like it, Harry decided to take him at his word.

After breakfast, while Crowley shifted back into a snake and curled up on a couch for a good long nap, Aziraphale showed Harry around the rest of the flat and the shop below it. Harry took careful note of anything Aziraphale said not to touch (mostly extremely old books) and vowed to stay well away from them. He felt like Aziraphale wouldn’t react like his aunt and uncle when he touched something he wasn’t supposed to, but better safe than sorry. The last thing he wanted was to give Aziraphale and Crowley a reason to change their minds about bringing him back to the Dursleys.

While they wandered around the bookshop Aziraphale chatted happily about various books he owned and asked Harry a great many questions, on everything from his favourite colour to what kind of foods he liked. Despite Harry having to repeatedly reply “I don’t know”, Aziraphale seemed pleased with his answers. Harry risked asking a few questions of his own, which was how he learned that Crowley had moved in with Aziraphale recently but still kept his own flat in Mayfair, mostly because there wasn’t really room in the bookshop for what was apparently a very large collection of houseplants.

“Also so he has somewhere to go when he needs some space,” Aziraphale added thoughtfully. “We all need our own space sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. He decided to nod as if he understood. Having his own space was not, so far, something he had much experience of. He’d had to share his cupboard with the spiders.

Aziraphale gave him an understanding look, but didn’t say anything.

By the time the tour of the bookshop was over, Harry felt somewhat exhausted, despite the extremely peaceful rest he’d had the previous night. Aziraphale waved away Harry’s attempt to apologise for yawning in his face, assuring him that he wasn’t offended. “Really, dear boy,” Aziraphale said soothingly, “it’s quite understandable. You’ve been through an extremely stressful experience, it’s hardly surprising that one night’s sleep didn’t completely restore you. Go and have a lie down on the couch. I’ll get you a blanket.”

“Uh,” Harry said, eyeing the couch. The greater part of it was occupied by the sleeping Crowley, who was still a snake.

“Oh don’t worry about him, Harry.” So saying, Aziraphale shoved the snake firmly off of the couch.

Crowley landed on the floor with an audible thud and let out a very indignant hiss. _What was that for, angel? I wasss napping._

“Yes and taking up the entire couch too. Other people would like to use it.” Harry tried not to flinch. He hoped Crowley wouldn’t blame him for Aziraphale pushing him off the couch.

“You didn’t have to shove me onto the floor,” Crowley grumbled, as he shifted back to human form and got to his feet. He eyed Harry for a moment, then his expression softened and he gestured for Harry to sit. When Harry hesitated, still worried that Crowley might be annoyed with him, Crowley’s expression softened further and he slung an arm around Harry’s shoulders and pushed him gently onto the couch.

“Seriously,” he said to Aziraphale, pulling a pair of sunglasses from nowhere and slipping them on. “You could have just asked.”

“I would have, dearest, but you’re very hard to wake up when you don’t want to. Remember the nineteenth century?”

Crowley groaned. “One time, I sleep for a couple of decades one time, and you never let me forget it.”

“Well, it was memorable, my dear.” Aziraphale glanced around. “Where’s the blanket gone ? I could have sworn I left it around here somewhere.”

“You did.” Crowley reached behind the couch and fished out a thick woollen blanket. “There you are, angel.”

“Thank you, dearest. Give it to Harry please – oh.” Aziraphale stopped. Harry was already asleep. “Poor child,” the angel said sympathetically. “He’s still exhausted.”

“Not surprising, considering everything,” Crowley agreed as he tucked the blanket around Harry’s shoulders. “Angel,” he said as he straightened up, his voice hard, “now that Harry’s occupied, there’re some things we need to talk about.”

* * *

_“What?”_

“The thing in his head,” said Crowley patiently, finishing his recital of the information he’d gathered from Petunia Dursley, “was probably left there when an evil mage tried to kill him as a baby.”

“Good Lord,” Aziraphale said blankly. He shook his head slowly, trying to clear it. “So this, this _Voldemort, _he’s dead?”

“As far as the aunt from hell knew, yeah.” Crowley paused. “Don’t look at me like that ‘Ziraphale,” he protested. “I’m giving my professional demonic opinion. Downstairs are probably eyeing up that woman’s soul right now.”

Aziraphale sighed. He knew Crowley was probably right.

“So,” the angel summarised, “Harry’s parents are dead, this Voldemort was killed in some kind of magical backlash which resulted in Harry’s scar and Harry was brought to his only living relatives, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, by the current headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore. Who warns the Dursleys that they must keep him or unspecified but terrible things will happen.”

“Pretty much.”

“And there is some kind of protection spell in place as long as Harry remains with those foul people.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Aziraphale frowned thoughtfully. “Blood,” he mused. “It’s got to be something involving blood. The aunt is his mother’s sister, yes? That’s a direct familial tie. A powerful spell then. The ones involving blood usually are.”

“Can’t be that great of a spell,” Crowley muttered. “Didn’t protect him at all from the Aunt and Uncle Shit, did it?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “I doubt it was designed to. I suspect it would only react to magical threats. What concerns me is that by taking Harry we may have disrupted the protection provided to him by the spell.”

“Angel,” said Crowley, his voice tinged with suspicious horror, “you’re not suggesting-”

“That Harry needs to return to his relatives?” Aziraphale’s lips thinned in disgust. “No, my dear, not for a second.”

“But?” said Crowley, relieved but still suspicious.

“But,” said Aziraphale, “if we don’t want to return him to his relatives-”

“And we don’t,” Crowley interpolated emphatically, just to make doubly sure they were on the same page. “Because they’re shit.”

“Quite. Then we must design something to replace it. The wards on the shop are probably doing the job for the moment, but they won’t work outside of it and I have no intention of freeing Harry from one prison just to trap him in another one with better taste in books.”

“So I’m guessing you think a quick miracle isn’t going to cut it?”

“I think,” said Aziraphale slowly, “that when it comes to Harry, well thought out spells are the way to go.”

Crowley groaned softly. “More research?”

“More research,” Aziraphale confirmed. “Which reminds me, now that we have some idea what caused that thing in his head, we’ll have to adjust our research in that too. My last idea was in quite the wrong direction.”

“Ughhh. All right, angel, lead me to the books.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, as Crowley followed him past stacks of old but otherwise normal books to a small room containing the angel’s collection of definitively magical texts, “I almost forgot, you didn’t tell me exactly what you did while you were in Surrey.”

“Mm? I just wrecked a few appliances, that’s all.”

“_Crowley,” _said Aziraphale warningly. “What did you do?”

The Serpent of Eden smiled. It was not a nice smile. “Nothing much,” he said innocently. “I just, y’know, brought knowledge.”

“Brought knowledge,” said the angel doubtfully. “Really? Knowledge of what?”

Crowley shrugged. “Oh, the old favourite. Right and wrong. Why kids shouldn’t be starved, beaten and made to sleep in cupboards. That sort of thing.”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, now deeply suspicious, “who precisely did you ‘bring knowledge’ to?”

Crowley’s smile became even less nice. “Cousin Dudley,” he replied, looking extremely pleased with himself. He saw Aziraphale’s puzzled look and smiled again. “Think about it, angel. The most important person in those peoples’ lives other than themselves is their son. He’s going to see things very clearly from now on. If they want him to keep his good opinion of them, they’re going to have to be a great deal less shit. For the rest of their lives. Frankly, I don’t think they’re up to it.”

“No,” Aziraphale agreed, looking troubled, “I don’t think they are.”

* * *

Harry woke in the afternoon to the sound of a bell chiming one o’ clock. He sat up and pushed the tartan blanket off of himself before looking around. Crowley and Aziraphale were nowhere to be seen. For a second, Harry felt panic grip at him, before the sounds of voices raised in enthusiastic discussion reached his ears. He listened for a moment, instinctively eavesdropping for anything he might need to know.

“I don’t know, Aziraphale, last time I saw someone use that version, it didn’t turn out well for him.” That was Crowley, sounding worried.

“That’s because Merlin was a pompous old blowhard, my dear. I, on the other hand, know exactly what I’m doing,” Aziraphale answered. Harry thought he sounded like he was acting more confident than he actually was. It was a familiar feeling.

“We just need to be careful, that’s all I’m saying.” Crowley again, still worried. “If we get discorporated now, things aren’t going to turn out well for us either.”

Harry didn’t know what discorporated meant, but it didn’t sound good. Still, he was not the subject of the conversation, so he probably wasn’t in trouble. He followed the sound of their voices to a little back room hidden behind several stacks of books. When he poked his head through the door, he found the two of them seated at a small table overflowing with extremely old books. Aziraphale had a pair of round reading glasses perched on his nose and Crowley’s sunglasses were off, exposing his serpent-like eyes.

Crowley looked up at the sound of Harry’s entrance, popped his sunglasses back on, and grinned at him. “Hey kid. Feeling any better?”

Harry thought for a moment and realised with mild shock that he felt very good. Better than he ever had, in fact. For the first time he could remember, his clothes didn’t itch or feel too thin, he didn’t feel tired and most importantly he didn’t feel the constant gnawing ache of hunger. He nodded in answer to Crowley’s question, which earned him a bigger grin.

“Great,” Crowley said happily. “Want to see some more magic?”

“Yes please,” Harry said, excitement making his butterflies in his stomach. He still wasn’t totally sure if he was a wizard, like Aziraphale had insisted, but the truth that magic itself was real was still enthralling.

Aziraphale pushed back his chair and stood up. “All right then.” He turned to Harry and gazed at him solemnly. “I have a spell I need to perform. However, you should know that it is one which personally affects you. So I won’t perform it without your agreement.” He held up a hand in the universal gesture for ‘hang on a minute’. “I know you’re curious, but do wait until I’ve explained a bit more before you agree. Look before you leap, as they say.”

Harry, who had been about to agree without further ado, nodded sheepishly. Aziraphale smiled at him and the slight knot of embarrassment and uncertainty which had begun to build in Harry’s stomach faded.

“Now,” Aziraphale said seriously, “Crowley had a conversation with your aunt this morning. Don’t panic, she doesn’t remember a word of it. However, we do have reason to believe that some wizards may be looking for you in order to return you to your aunt and uncle. No doubt with the best of motives-”

Crowley snorted loudly. Aziraphale gave him a Look.

“As I was saying,” he continued after a moment, “no doubt, they have your best interests at heart. But they don’t have all the facts.”

“You don’t bloody say,” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale sighed heavily. “The point, my dear,” he said to Harry, “is that I can place a ward on you that should prevent anyone tracking you down using the more common magical means. There are several protective wards on my shop itself which prevent any occupants from being scryed upon-“

“Spied on using magic,” Crowley interrupted, seeing Harry’s forehead wrinkle in confusion.

“The point,” Aziraphale repeated, “is that the ward I place on you would be a bit more direct. I don’t want to do it unless you give your consent and Harry, it is very important that you think carefully before you do. That goes for all types of magic, not just wards. Flippantly agreeing to things when magic is involved can get you in all sorts of trouble. Do you understand?”

Harry nodded slowly. It made sense, he supposed.

“Good,” said Aziraphale. “Now take a few minutes to think about the ward. Have a dawdle around the shop and come back to me when you’ve made a decision, there’s a good lad.”

Harry had in fact made his decision before Aziraphale finished the end of his sentence, but he wandered around the shop anyway to please Aziraphale. He thought about the magical ward and about Aziraphale’s warning. Then he thought about being forced to back to the Dursleys by a bunch of wizards who hadn’t helped him once in the ten years he’d been living in Privet Drive, wearing Dudley’s hand-me-downs and sleeping in a spider filled cupboard. After that, he thought about Aziraphale and Crowley, who had fed him, given him clean clothes and a place to sleep, and invited him to stay in their home as long as he liked. He thought about how they spoke to him and how they spoke to each other. Aunt Petunia, he thought, would have had dire things to say about Aziraphale and Crowley. Harry decided that this was a good reason to like them even more.

Finally, Harry made his way back to Aziraphale. “I’ve thought about it,” he announced. “I want you to do it.”

“All right,” said Aziraphale. “Here we go then.”

Harry watched in fascination as Aziraphale drew a complicated glowing symbol in the air in front of him and spoke in a language that Harry didn’t know, but almost instinctively knew was very old. The glowing symbol hung in the air for a moment before floating lazily towards Harry. When it touched him, he twitched, expecting pain, but there was only a feeling of immense comfort and warmth. The colour of the glow changed slightly from pure gold to gold with a tinge of pink and then vanished.

“Huh,” said Crowley. “That supposed to happen, angel?”

“Hmm,” said Aziraphale, surveying Harry curiously. “I wasn’t quite expecting it to go like that, but it does seem to have taken properly. Which is good news, because we can now take you out for lunch without having to worry about being interrupted by well-meaning wizards.” Then he beamed. “But first, I’ve got something to show you. I redecorated your room while you were napping. Would you like to see it?”

“My room?”

Aziraphale beamed again at Harry’s surprise. “Yes dear, you can’t sleep on the couch forever, after all.” He took Harry’s hand and led him up the stairs, Crowley following behind them.

Upstairs in the flat, there was a door opposite the one containing the bedroom Harry has originally woken up in. Harry eyed it carefully. He was sure it hadn’t been there this morning. He looked up at Aziraphale who nodded in encouragingly at him. “Go ahead Harry, tell me what you think.”

Harry pushed the door open carefully, just in case it vanished again, and stepped inside. A second later, his mouth dropped open.

The newly redecorated bedroom was bright and spacious, with a large window in one wall which looked out onto the street. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and chair and a bookshelf full of children’s books. There was also what looked like a large toy box in one corner. To Harry, whose only bedroom for as long as he could remember was the closet under the stairs in Number 4 Privet Drive, it all seemed impossibly grand.

The bed itself was a big comfortable affair, with pillows and blankets all in the same tartan pattern as Aziraphale’s bowtie. Crowley took one look at it and muttered “_really_, Aziraphale?”.

Aziraphale smiled back serenely while Harry resisted the urge to pinch himself. He couldn’t quite believe this was real. Or, if it was real, that it was all for him.

“Not bad, Angel,” Crowley admitted, finally. Then he grinned. “Just needs a final touch.” He snapped his fingers and Harry looked around expectantly. After a moment he frowned in confusion. Nothing seemed to have changed.

Crowley was still grinning when Harry turned curious eyes on him. “Pull the blind down, turn out the light and look up,” he advised, winking behind his sunglasses.

Harry did so and gasped. Beside him, Aziraphale exclaimed “Oh, my darling, you’ve outdone yourself!”

Harry didn’t have any words. He was awestruck by the sight of an entire galaxy of stars softly glowing on the ceiling.

“There you go kid,” Crowley said. His voice was very quiet. “No need to worry about the dark anymore.”


	8. Day Out

“The beach,” Aziraphale said firmly. “Definitely the beach.”

“Whazzat, angel?” Crowley said muzzily, waking up from his nap on the sofa. His hand scrabbled around automatically for his sunglasses, which he duly found and slid on. “What about the beach?”

“We’re going today,” Aziraphale told him.

“Oh,” Crowley yawned, his jaw stretching just a little wider than should be humanly possible. Then his brain caught up with his ears. “Wait, what? Why are we going to the beach? You hate the beach. The last time we went anywhere near a beach, you got your feet wet and spent the rest of the day complaining about the sand sticking to your patent leather shoes even after I miracled it off.”

“Because,” Aziraphale said, “it is London in July, it is twenty-seven degrees Celsius, it feels at least ten degrees hotter and most importantly, I was talking to Harry this morning over breakfast about what he usually did during the summer and he told me he had never been to the beach. _Those people _would leave him at an elderly neighbour’s house and then take their son for a day out.”

Crowley hissed. “Why am I _not_ surprisssed?”

“Because it is abundantly clear that they are some of the worst kind of humans imaginable?” Aziraphale replied.

Crowley rolled his eyes. He knew much of the effect was lost due to his sunglasses, but the gesture in itself made him feel better. “I wass being rhetorical, Asssiraphale.”

“Yes dear. Unless,” Aziraphale said apologetically, “you don’t want to come. You’re not obligated to, of course.”

Crowley waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, I’ll come, angel. Can’t have you and the kid going on public transport. In this heat it’d be hell.” He coughed. “Or pretty close anyway. Got a commendation for the bus thing.”

Aziraphale looked at him curiously. “The M25, the ah- bus thing, oh, and didn’t you have something to do with the Underground as well. I’m sensing a pattern.”

Crowley shrugged. “Transportation,” he said, encapsulating in one word the generational aggravation in humanity’s struggle to reliably get from Point A to Point B. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving, er, demonically speaking.” He stood up and ran a hand through his hair, which only made it look more artfully tousled. “Anyway, doesn’t matter in this instance. I’ll drive us in the Bentley. If you’re sure you want to go?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale looked pleased with himself. “I have no objection to the beach, provided my arrival there doesn’t come as a surprise to me. The secret to a day at the beach is being properly prepared. Besides,” he added, “I think it would be good for Harry to have a little break from the city. He’s had a lot to adjust to and quite a shock yesterday of course . . .”

Crowley nodded as Aziraphale trailed off. Yesterday they had finally sat Harry down in the kitchen and gently explained that he had not lost his parents in a car crash, but to a particularly loathsome specimen of humanity. They hadn’t been able to tell him much more than Petunia Dursley had told Crowley and Harry hadn’t spoken much for the rest of the day, in addition to barely picking at his food.

“Beach is likely to be busy on a hot day, angel,” Crowley pointed out.

“Oh, I think whichever one we go to is likely to be quiet enough, don’t you?”

* * *

This was how Crowley found himself, an hour and a quarter later, opening the Bentley’s boot to remove a large picnic basket, a windbreaker sheet and associated poles, as well as towels, a pair of fold-out chairs and an umbrella.

(It should in fact have been a two and a half hour journey to this particular beach, usually with a train involved, but for Crowley long aggravating rail journeys in a heatwave were something that happened to other people.)

“Here,” he said, handing a bottle of sunscreen to Harry. “Get that on you before you go down to the sand. Few things more annoying than trying to get it on with sand blowing everywhere.”

Harry looked at it, mildly puzzled.

“You put it on your skin,” Crowley advised him. “Stops sunburn.”

“I know,” Harry said hesitantly. “It’s just . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Uncle Vernon said- he said- that people of my colour don’t need sunscreen.”

Crowley looked at Aziraphale. The angel looked back at him. Then they both looked at Harry. At the livid white scar on his forehead standing out in clear contrast to the rest of his face.

Crowley had an excellent view of Aziraphale’s face as it went carefully blank. “Oh no dear,” the angel said in the most neutral tone possible. “That’s a common mistake. Humans of all skin types need to protect themselves from the sun. You might not burn as badly as someone with, for example, my complexion, but too much exposure to the sun without protection can still cause damage. You still need sunscreen, as well as a hat and a t-shirt.”

“Oh,” said Harry. He looked at the bottle again. “Okay.” He began to methodically slather his face, arms and legs with sunscreen.

“That,” Aziraphale muttered in Crowley’s ear, “explains some of the skin damage I had to heal. I am going to curse that man into the next century.”

“Ah-ah. That’s my job, angel.”

“I don’t see why you should have all the fun.” Aziraphale paused. “I suppose we’ll have to cover ourselves in the stuff as well. Do As I Say Not As I Do isn’t exactly the best way to set an example.”

Crowley grinned at Aziraphale’s mild discomfiture. “Don’t worry, angel. I’ll help you do your back if you like.”

Aziraphale stiffened and flushed slightly, his eyes automatically going heavenward. Then his shoulders relaxed and he smiled back at Crowley. “Thank you my dear. Would you like me to help you with yours?”

“Ah- ng- yeah,” stuttered the Serpent of Eden, suddenly redder than an entire vegetable aisle full of tomatoes. “Yeah, that’d be- yeah. Thanks.”

Aziraphale set off towards the sand, a certain spring in his step.

To Crowley’s mild surprise, the day at the beach proceeded to be perfectly pleasant. As Aziraphale had predicted, the beach was not busy. Nor was it abandoned. There simply weren’t the unbearable crowds one would normally expect on such a hot sunny day.

After the sunscreen had been carefully applied, with both of them taking advantage of the excuse to give each other what basically amounted to a back massage, the two of them sat on their fold out chairs underneath the umbrella Crowley had set up. Aziraphale had got a book out and Crowley dozed slightly, both of them keeping an eye on Harry, who, also now covered in sufficient sunscreen, dashed in and out of the water. Soon, he was joined by two girls, who looked to be about four and seven years old and all three children played ‘keep away from the waves’ with great gusto and much shrieking.

When as much fun as possible had been wrung out of running away from the waves, the children made their way back up the beach towards Crowley and Aziraphale.

The smaller girl, a child just out of toddler-hood with a mop of curly brown hair, ran ahead of Harry and her sister and approached Crowley. “I wike your sungwasses,” she informed him solemnly, a slight awkwardness with the letter L marring her speech. “My daddy has sungwasses too.”

“Issat so?” Crowley inquired sleepily. “That’s nice for him. Whatcha want kiddos?”

“Can Harry come and make sandcastles with us?” the older girl asked. She pointed along the beech to where a couple in their early thirties were lying on towels. One of them, a dark haired man almost as skinny as Crowley, did have a nice pair of sunglasses. “We have buckets and spades!”

Crowley looked at the couple and concentrated, reaching out with senses that no human had. He waited a moment to be safe, but no evil intent emanated from them. At most there was a desire for another cool drink.

He and Aziraphale shared a look.

“I don’t see why not,” Aziraphale said. “Do you want to, Harry?”

“Yes please!” Harry exclaimed. The girls both cheered.

Crowley tried not to wince at how excited the boy was to be told he could play with other children who weren’t even his own age.

“Off you go then, dear,” Aziraphale smiled. “Just stay where we can see you please.”

“Think you were right, ‘Ziraphale,” Crowley admitted as Harry and the two girls dashed off to collect the buckets and spades. “Kid needed a day out.”

“Yes indeed,” Aziraphale said, pleased with himself. He turned a page of his book. “It’s nice to see him getting on with other children isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Crowley agreed vaguely. He was not a fan of the four letter word, but it _was_ good to see Harry having fun.

They both watched for a few minutes as Harry and the girls settled on the sand halfway between them and the girls’ parents and began constructing a sizeable sandcastle. Eventually, after a few toppled towers of sand, the girls press-ganged their father into helping them construct a more architecturally sound castle. Crowley caught the man’s gaze as he was dragged over to the sandcastle by his younger daughter. The man grinned back with the universal look which meant ‘_Kids, eh?_’

There was still no sense of ill intent, so, satisfied that both Harry and his angel were safely occupied, Crowley nodded back at the man and leaned back in his chair to have another nap.

The day at the beach ended some hours later with Harry waving happily at his small friends as they piled into the back of their parents car. Aziraphale, who had ended up having a long conversation about early English literature with their mother, also waved enthusiastically.

“What a delightful family,” the angel beamed.

Crowley, whose nap had been interrupted by a four-year-old tugging at his fingers and insisting that ‘Harry’s daddy needs to hewp us buid the sandcastwe too!’, grunted and rubbed the sand out of his hair. But the corner of his mouth twitched up despite himself.

The awkward moment of explanation had fortunately been completely sidestepped by the girls’ father, who had rushed to apologise for his daughter’s over-enthusiasm and introduced himself in an irish accent as Connor O’ Sullivan from Kildare, currently on holiday in England with his family. He’d then complimented Crowley on his ‘son’s’ ability to play gently with younger children and bet that he and his older girl could build a bigger sandcastle than Crowley and Harry.

The fact that Crowley and Harry had won the impromptu competition without any cheating had cheered up Crowley more than he’d expected and Connor’s good-natured acknowledgement of Crowley’s superiority at sandcastle construction had been very pleasing. The offer of a beer for Crowley and an ice-cream for Harry had been the last thing needed to convince Crowley to idly perform a miracle ensuring that the rest of the Sullivans’ family holiday would go very smoothly.

(Two weeks later, when both of his children fell asleep the moment they sat down in the plane and only woke up as the flight touched down in Dublin Airport, Connor O’ Sullivan and his wife silently offered grateful thanks to Anyone who might be listening.)

“Yeah,” Crowley allowed magnanimously. “They’re not bad, for humans.” He turned to Harry, who looked tired but very happy and tossed a towel at him. “Alright sandcastle champ, towel off that sand and then into the car with you. Time for us to go home.”

* * *

Some days after Harry’s first visit to the beach, Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall sat in the headmaster’s study and watched tensely as a large white quill began to write letters of it’s own accord. Professor McGonagall concentrated on keeping her breathing steady as the minutes passed by and Hogwarts’ new first years were written to and ticked off the alphabetical list. Abbot, Hannah was the first. By the time Finch-Fletchey, Justin was written to, Minerva had taken more than a few sips of brandy to steady her nerves. By the time the Quill had sped past Longbottom, Neville and Nott, Theodore the headmaster seemed to be debating strongly whether or not he should pour a glass for himself. He had gone through an entire packet of Sherbet Lemons.

By the time the Quill had written to Patil, Padma and Patil, Parvati, both professors were gripping each others’ hand tightly despite themselves.

At last, with the feeling that the room was spinning slightly and her tinnitus whistling in her ears louder than it had in years, Minerva McGonagall watched the Quill write the words ‘_Harry Potter’_ followed by the words:

_Harry’s Bedroom, _

_Second Floor,_

_A.Z. Fell & Co. _

_Soho,_

_London._

“He’s alive,” she gasped, a sob threatening to break through. “Oh Albus!” She pulled the letter towards her, staring at the address and wondering at the lack of street name. But what did that _matter_ right now, her thoughts asked. “Harry’s alive!”

Albus Dumbledore, who had become ever more exhausted from the strain of the last week of fruitless searching, had sat up like a man given a shot of adrenaline. “Yes,” he said, and Minerva could hear the overwhelming relief in the headmasters’ voice. “He’s alive. And,” he continued with determination, “I am going to deliver his letter personally.”


	9. The Headmaster

Albus Dumbledore apparated quietly to an alley next to the street where Shacklebolt and Moody had lost Harry Potter’s trail. He cast a quick Notice-Me-Not charm on himself and then stepped out onto the sunlit street.

There it was, directly across from him. AZ Fell & Co. He took a good look at the old stone building . . . and then his gaze transferred to the building next door.

He paused, blinked, and looked back at the bookshop. His gaze shifted. Once again, this time with some asperity, he looked back at the bookshop and attempted to keep his gaze locked to it.

He couldn’t. Instead, his brain insisted that there was nothing of interest across from him and his gaze kept obstinately sliding to the business next door.

Dumbledore narrowed his eyes and took a deep breath. This time he concentrated hard, stubbornly ignoring his brain’s insistence on looking away from the old bookshop. Seconds ticked by as he fought a tug of war between what he knew to be true and what powerful magic wanted his brain and eyes to think was true. Sweat ran down his brow in rivulets and he began to breathe heavily. Pressure gathered at his temple.

Then, with one last push on his part, the pressure against Dumbledore’s mind dissolved. He looked across the street at the book shop and felt no urge to look away.

“Well, well,” he murmured to himself. “That is a powerful ward. No wonder Kingsley and Alastor didn’t think to investigate this shop.”

Dumbledore crossed the street and took note of the sign which declared the shop’s opening hours. Or, as it were, the lack of them. He smiled and tried the door knob. The door rattled but did not open, so the old wizard discreetly tried an unlocking charm. He was not very surprised when it failed. Still, it had been worth a try.

Dumbledore’s scalp prickled and an amulet he kept hidden around his neck began to grow warm. He fished it out and held it a moment, concentrating on the faint sense of approaching power it had detected. The amulet grew hot in his hand and he let go, making sure as he tucked it back under his shirt that there was at least one layer of cloth between the amulet and his skin. Then hurried up the street and into a nearby alley-way.

He watched as a sleek black vintage car drew up beside the shop and two men and a boy got out. He took careful note of the two men, one stocky, blond, wearing old-fashioned dress by muggle standards, the other – the other, barring his flame red hair, reminded Albus of an older version of the unfortunate Sirius Black. Dark clothes, tight jeans, sunglasses, even the length of his hair.

However, most of Dumbledore’s attention was taken by the boy who got out of the car.

It was like seeing James Potter again, eleven years old, on his first day at Hogwarts.

Of course, James Potter had not had glasses at that age. He had not been quite so short or so skinny. He had also not been dressed in trousers and trainers of the latest, most expensive muggle brands, incongruously paired with a tartan t-shirt.

(When one grows up in a cold cupboard with only Dudley Dursley’s hand-me-downs available, one’s sense of style can be enormously stunted. Comfort is all important and everything else can go hang. Also, Harry, not wishing to offend either of his guardians, had opted for a mix and match approach. As a result both demon and angel were forced to regularly hide winces at Harry’s sartorial choices.)

A burst of guilt hit the headmaster of Hogwarts like a bludger to the gut. James Potter and Lily Evans, two of the best students he’d ever had, had not lived to see their twenty-second birthdays. He gazed at their son, already half the age they’d been when they’d died for standing up to a tyrant. Dumbledore noted with some relief that Harry did not seem to be hurt. Neither did he seem frightened or unhappy. In fact, though he was too far away to hear what was being said, Dumbledore could see that Harry was talking animatedly to the redheaded man.

Dumbledore watched as the blond man opened the door of the shop and then paused suddenly. He leaned towards his red-headed companion and murmured something in his ear. The red-headed man stiffened and then took Harry’s arm and ushered the boy quickly into the shop. The blond man remained outside, scanning the street.

Dumbledore drew back from the mouth of the alleyway, moving slowly so as not to catch the blond man’s eye, and considered his options.

The strength of the wards on the shop and the reaction of his amulet suggested that storming in righteously with wand raised would be foolish at best and downright dangerous at worst. Furthermore, from the little he’d seen, Harry seemed to trust the two men he was with. Being a complete stranger who rushed in and attempted to remove him from them had the capacity to create a very bad first impression. The last thing he wanted was for James and Lily’s son to think he had reason to fear him.

It would also be foolish to confront the two men before he had more information about their identities. Clearly they were wizards, but Dumbledore was not familiar with either of them and that was odder than it might have seemed, considering Magical Britain’s relatively small population. They appeared to be in their mid to late forties (or perhaps early fifties – it could be harder to tell when it came to wizards) which meant that they had most likely passed through Hogwarts. If they hadn’t, well, the vast majority of magical children in the United Kingdom were educated there and when a parent made other arrangements it tended to cause comment. Thus Dumbledore found his lack of familiarity with the two wizards mildly disturbing.

No, he decided, as he watched the blond man take one last look around the street before he disappeared into the shop. A confrontation now would not be wise. Better to just deliver Harry’s letter and see what reaction it provoked. In the meantime, research into who exactly the unknown wizards were would be prudent. Also, now that he knew about the wards, it would be best to have members of the Order keep the shop under surveillance.

Moody and a partner, Dumbledore supposed. Alastor was retired and therefore had the time, but he could be erratic. Ideally Kingsley Shacklebolt would keep a leash on his more unreliable tendencies, but Shacklebolt was moving up the Auror ranks and his free time was becoming more limited as a result.

Perhaps rotating partners, he mused. But that would mean more people who knew where Harry Potter was and that meant tedious hours spent mediating disagreements on how to handle the situation. He’d have to consider carefully who to assign to surveillance duty along with Moody. Of course, Minerva was theoretically free until the start of term . . .

“May I assist you, my dear fellow? You seem to be taking quite the interest in my little shop.”

* * *

Aziraphale looked consideringly at the human mage. Elderly and well dressed, in a style that would appear somewhat old-fashioned to the non-magical humans, but not worthy of serious remark. Clearly the man was a magic-user who knew when to leave the robes at home. There was a sense of power, too. Upon hearing Aziraphale’s voice, the man had turned around slowly and simply given him a blandly enquiring look. There had only been the tiniest movement of his shoulders to indicate any surprise or discomfort at having been caught snooping.

Theoretically, a human mage could not possibly be a threat to an Angel of the Lord. Of course, theoretically the Antichrist couldn’t prevent the end of the world by metaphorically pointing out that Satan hadn’t been keeping up with the child support payments. Aziraphale had seen enough over the last six-thousand years to know that contrary to what Heaven or Hell might say, a determined human mage could seriously inconvenience representatives of both Above and Below.

Best to be a little cautious then.

“May I assist you, Mr . . ?” Aziraphale trailed off. He was reasonably sure he knew who the man was, but he was curious to see if the mage would admit his identity given the opportunity.

“Professor Albus Dumbledore,” the mage replied, confirming Aziraphale’s suspicions. He inclined his head politely. “You are the owner of that establishment?” he asked, gesturing towards the bookshop.

Aziraphale inclined his head in return. “Yes.” He favoured Professor Dumbledore with the smile he reserved for extremely persistent customers and waited.

“And you are . . ?” Dumbledore enquired, when it became clear that Aziraphale would not be volunteering anything further.

“You may call me whatever you fancy,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. “But ‘Mr Fell’ is generally acceptable. Now, what can I do for you Mr. Dumbledore?”

He noted the man’s very faint twitch upon being addressed as Mister rather than Professor. _Aha, _Aziraphale thought. _So you’re that kind. Good at hiding it though, I suspect._

“I understand that you have a child currently in your care,” Dumbledore said, and Aziraphale could see that the man was tensing, ever so slightly. His voice, however, remained completely casual. “A boy by the name of Harry Potter.”

“Yes indeed,” Aziraphale said, once more smiling at Dumbledore with the expression he reserved for customers who tried to insist that he sell them a first edition. “My partner and I made his acquaintance some days ago. He’d had something of an ordeal, poor boy. Are you a relative?” he asked innocently.

“No,” Dumbledore said after a long moment. “I am the headmaster at Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” He paused and Aziraphale had a feeling he was waiting for a specific reaction.

Aziraphale just inclined his head again. “I see.” Once again, he waited, volunteering nothing further.

“I was somewhat surprised,” Dumbledore continued, narrowing his eyes, “when his acceptance letter was being written, to find that he was no longer residing with his uncle and aunt.”

“Really?” said Aziraphale. “I suspect Mr. Dumbledore” – he noted the twitch with a certain amount of satisfaction – “that you might benefit from a proper account of the last few days from my partner and I. And you’ll want to give Harry his letter, of course. Why don’t you come and have a cup of tea?”

So saying, Aziraphale turned his back on the old mage and strode across the street to his bookshop with Dumbledore following behind him. He opened the doors, ushered the man inside, and was immediately treated to the sound of Dumbledore voicing a startled oath as a large black snake slithered past their ankles.

“Oh don’t mind him,” Aziraphale said cheerfully as Crowley hissed in the human’s direction. “He’s not as bad as he appears.”

Crowley hissed at Dumbledore once more and then vanished among the bookshelves. Aziraphale smiled affectionately after him. Then he led Dumbledore to the back room where he stored his magical books and motioned for his visitor to take a seat. Two mugs of tea already sat steaming on the table.

Aziraphale watched as Dumbledore sat down in the chair he’d indicated and took the nearest cup of tea with the air of a man who was totally at ease. If nothing else, the angel thought, he’d have to give the man credit for his ability to maintain his composure.

In a few short sentences, Aziraphale informed Albus Dumbledore of the sequence of events that had led Harry to stumble, exhausted and starving, to his bookshop. He was pleased to note that the man seemed mildly disturbed by Vernon Dursley’s homicidal tendencies.

As Aziraphale finished, the door creaked open and Crowley strolled into the room, hands thrust in his trouser pockets. “Hello,” he said. “Who’s this?”

Mr Dumbledore is the Headmaster at Hogwarts,” Aziraphale explained as if Crowley hadn’t just hissed at the man and attempted to trip him up as he came in the door.. “Mr Dumbledore, this is Crowley.”

“Anthony J,” Crowley said, with a sharp grin. He’d noted the minute twitch. “Here on business, Mr Dumbledore?”

“He’s asking after Harry, my dear. Concerned about his welfare.”

“Oh, is he now? That’sss interesting.”

“Is it?” Dumbledore asked mildly. “His parents were some of my best students. I myself placed him with his relatives after they were sadly taken from us.”

“Oh yes?” Crowley said, leaning forward into the human’s personal space. “Boy spends ten years with people who treat him worse than the dirt under their feet, but _now_ you’re concerned about him?”

“I have always been concerned about Harry’s welfare,” Dumbledore said stiffly. To his credit, he did not lean back from Crowley. “If his relatives have been mistreating him to the extent you suggest, I am naturally very concerned. As I said, I myself placed him with them, in the belief that he would be perfectly safe.”

“Are you saying you didn’t know anything about it?” Crowley demanded disbelievingly. “You turn up quick after the kid runs away, that suggests you’ve been keeping an eye on him. Or someone else has, on your behalf.”

“I do find the idea that you were totally ignorant of Harry’s suffering rather hard to believe,” Aziraphale added quietly, his eyes hard. “Why did you not remove him from a clearly unsafe situation? You don’t lack the power, that’s clear to both of us.”

“There are excellent reason for Harry to remain with his relatives,” Dumbledore said calmly. “I have come to understand that things have been – less than acceptable. And something will be done. But he must return to his aunt and uncle as soon as possible. Both for his own safety and for the safety of others.”

“The protection spell,” Aziraphale said flatly. “You’re talking about that protection spell tied to his blood. If it is still as necessary as you imply then I take it that the wizard Voldemort still lives. Severely diminished, perhaps, but still dangerous?”

Dumbledore nodded slowly, his grip tightening on his mug of tea. Aziraphale suspected that he hadn’t expected them to know what he was referring to.

“Bit of a dud, that spell,” Crowley pointed out. “Might be keeping Harry safe from Voldefart but it’s not much good against the lovely Petunia and her dear Vernon.” He began to count on his fingers. “Insulting his appearance. Lying to him about how his parents died. Encouraging Cousin Dudley and his little gang to abuse him. Denying him food. Making him sleep in a spider-infested cupboard. Thumping him across the head whenever they feel like it, which is all the time by the way.”

Crowley paused and focused on the human, who had paled considerably. “There’s words for that, you know, and they’re not,” he said and then mocking imitated the human, “’less than acceptable.’ I think Endangering a Minor might be more correct. Deliberate neglect.” Crowley leaned forward again and bared his teeth, giving Dumbledore a good view of his longer than usual canines. _“Child abuse.”_

“I understand people go to jail for that sort of thing,” Aziraphale injected pleasantly. “And those who cover it up. What is the term? Oh yes, accessory to a crime. Is that right?”

“I- did not- know,” Dumbledore half choked, his hand clenching around his wand. The blood had drained almost entirely from his face and his eyes flickered between demon and angel. “I did not-”

“No,” Crowley agreed, drawing back. “You didn’t _know_. But you suspected. And yet you did nothing. Why?”

“They are his legal guardians. I didn’t know the extent-”

“_That’s. Not. An. Excuse.” _Aziraphale’s eyes were shining with rage and his words seemed to echo as if they’d been spoken in a much vaster space.

“’S also rubbish,” Crowley snapped. “Mages, oh excuse me, _wizards,_ don’t give a toss about the non-magical legalities except for when it suits them.” He glared at Dumbledore from behind his sunglasses. “Don’t try to bullshit me, human, I can smell the guilt you’re feeling. Mildly surprised that you’re feeling it at all, to be honest.”

Dumbledore flinched, very briefly. Then he resolutely turned towards Aziraphale. “You cannot expect that Harry will be allowed to remain with you, Mr. Fell,” he said to Aziraphale, putting his mug down with a clink of finality. He stood up. “You certainly have no legal nor magical right to him.”

Aziraphale eyed the headmaster of Hogwarts with mounting disgust. “I think you’ll find that you are mistaken,” he said his tone placid once again. “He has accepted our shelter, eaten our food and drink. By older laws than yours, he is ours.”

Crowley smiled, exposing sharp canines again. He carefully removed his sunglasses, revealing his serpent’s eyes. Then, in a lilting sing song voice, he recited “Come away, o human child. To the waters and the wild . . .”

Dumbledore went very, very still.

Then his wand moved.


	10. The Headmaster II

The spell which erupted from Dumbledore’s wand would have caused severe problems for a human. It would also have caused near terminal inconvenience for a particular type of non-human being with issues about correct hospitality, true names, and the ability to completely mislead people while telling no lies.

Since Crowley was neither of these things, the bolt of sparking blue light which fizzed through the air merely bounced off of the sunglasses in his hand and into a medium sized ornament on a nearby bookshelf, which it disintegrated.

The second spell a moment later succeeded only in making both otherworldly beings’ hair stand on end and exploding Dumbledore's own teacup.

“Well that was rude,” Crowley drawled once the dust had settled, replacing his sunglasses on his face and regarding the remains on the bookshelf of what had been a truly tasteless bit of angelic-themed gimcrackery. He looked back at Dumbledore and was pleased to note the old mage’s expression of shock. “Care to try again?” the demon asked, as he ran a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to make it lie flat.

“Absolutely not!” Aziraphale snapped before the headmaster could respond, stepping between Crowley and Dumbledore. He glared at the human. “My good sir, have you no manners? Are you lost to all propriety? Lower your wand immediately!”

Without waiting to see if he was obeyed, Aziraphale spun around and waved a finger at Crowley. “Don’t you start getting ideas. I will not have the two of you turning bits of my shop into dust or frogs or whatever else it is mages are transfiguring things into these days!”

“But-“ Crowley began to protest, feeling aggrieved. He hadn’t started it!

(Crowley did not count reciting extremely specific and provoking poetry as ‘starting things’. If he had, the list of commendations attached to his name in Hell would have been a lot longer. He’d always had a way with words.)

“No,” Aziraphale insisted firmly. “Your last battle with a mage was very impressive, my dear, but I will not have you re-enacting it with Mr. Dumbledore in the middle of my shop. Getting the slime off of my books would be a complete nightmare.”

“But he’s a total wa-“

“_No_.”

“Oh fine,” Crowley muttered, subsiding ungraciously. He looked back at Dumbledore who, though remaining ready to defend himself, was now eyeing them both with a sort of reluctant fascinated interest. “So now what?”

“Now,” said Aziraphale, “I say again Mr Dumbledore, that by considerably older and more binding laws than mortal ones, Harry is ours for so long as we choose. However, you may take my word for it that we are truly interested only in what’s best for him and will not cause him any mental nor physical harm. Which, frankly, is a lot more than can be said for your previous choice of guardians. So you are going to sit back down and we are going to talk this out like civilized adult beings. Despite,” he paused momentarily to glare at Dumbledore again, “your abysmal and atrocious manners.”

* * *

“Yes, yes, you didn’t know,” Crowley said in response to Dumbledore’s repeated protest fifteen minutes later. Luckily for Aziraphale’s blood pressure the mage had quickly seen the pointlessness of engaging in a magical duel and was now seated at the table once again, with a fresh cup of tea in front of him. “Fair enough, you’ve made that clear. But you _suspected_,” he insisted, unwilling, on Harry’s behalf, to let this go. The memory of the boy, stumbling into the bookshop, exhausted and terrified for his life, was still fresh in Crowley’s memory and it was fuelling a slow burning fire of anger at the man in front of him.

“I did,” the old wizard admitted, fiddling with the cup of tea in his hands. “I had never met Dursley himself before Harry ran away, but I knew that Petunia at least had her reasons to be bitter towards those of us with magic. I knew she favoured her own child over Harry. It was only natural, if mildly reprehensible. But I never thought she would of be so bitter as to engage in . . “

Dumbledore trailed off, unable to continue.

“Child abuse?” Crowley suggested with deliberate precision. He did not intend to let the human dance around the subject.

“She hit him with a frying pan, did you know that?” he asked Dumbledore when the man didn’t reply. “One of the big cast iron ones. You’re lucky Harry dodged and only got a badly bruised shoulder. A second slower and your Boy-Who-Lived would have been in a hospital bed with a fractured skull and permanent brain damage. If he didn’t die outright. Blows to the head can kill a lot quicker than most humans think. These,” Crowley finished slowly and deliberately, “are the kinds of humans you left an infant with. Bravo. Job well done.”

“I had no choice!” Dumbledore snapped, having finally had enough. “Voldemort’s return threatens the lives of everyone living in Britain, whether they be magical or muggle. The blood wards are the only way humanly possible to provide Harry with the adequate round the clock protection from Voldemort and his followers that he requires as a child who has not yet learned appropriate magic.”

“What about Hogwarts?” Aziraphale asked, intervening before another magical duel could get started. “Would he not have been safer under your own eye? The school is well protected as I recall.”

“Not well enough,” Dumbledore admitted grudgingly. “There have been cases of successful intruders. And all it would take is one. Besides,” he continued, “that would have put him in a building full of people who would treat him as a celebrity and a hero before he could even walk and talk. Hardly the best environment for an infant.”

“Because a house full of bullies and abusers is so much better,” Crowley muttered.

“When there is a serious risk of potentially being raised by Voldemort’s sympathisers?” Dumbledore replied. “Then yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Aziraphale asked, taken aback.

Dumbledore sighed heavily. “If his blood relatives were deemed unsuitable, Harry’s guardianship would have been a matter for the Wizengamot. There are families with power and influence who claimed to have been coerced into following Voldemort and thus avoided imprisonment after the war. They would have jumped at the chance to get their hands on the Boy-Who-Lived.”

Aziraphale frowned. “But did his parents not leave a will, nominating a suitable guardian? That’s the usual way of things isn’t it?”

“They did,” Dumbledore confirmed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Harry’s nominated guardian is currently serving a life sentence in Azkaban – a magical prison - for murdering thirteen people, as well as betraying James and Lily Potter to Voldemort.”

There was a sudden, horrified, silence.

“You may criticise me as much as you like. I admit that many of your criticisms are just,” Dumbledore said quietly but firmly as he looked at their suddenly ashen faces. “I offer no more excuses. But the facts remain. The wizarding world may refuse to admit it, but Voldemort is still out there, still dangerous and he still has powerful followers, which means that we are still at war. I had to do the best I could - without the level of magical power you both seem to enjoy.”

Crowley scowled at the room in general, discomposed by the fact that Dumbledore had, against all probability, a good point. “Okay fine,” he said, waving his hands in exasperation. “So you did your best in what you saw as wartime conditions. Fine. We’re still not giving him back to the Dursleys. I wouldn’t trust them to raise a dog.”

“And I should trust _your_ parenting skills?” Dumbledore asked, the scepticism clear in his voice. “Despite your general appearance, you are both clearly not human.” He gestured towards Crowley’s sunglasses to illustrate his point. “What do you know of the requirements of mortal children? How can I be sure that Harry will not come to harm in your care?”

“I’ve raised humans before,” Crowley said, indignant at the implication that he didn’t know how to handle children. “And they turned out mostly fine! Didn’t even cause the end of the world!”

“Most reassuring.”

Crowley glowered at the headmaster.

Aziraphale took a sip of tea and carefully did not look at either of their faces. He thought about Crowley’s most recent foray into childcare and tried not to wince. Warlock Dowling had turned out mostly fine it was true, but it couldn’t be denied that they’d unintentionally given the (wrong) boy a rather unusual childhood. Of course, that _had_ been because they were intentionally trying to influence him towards Heaven and Hell. Harry’s case was somewhat different. He didn’t have the power to re-write reality on a universal scale for a start.

Furthermore, it was true that Crowley was good with children and always had been. He was, almost in spite of himself, eternally fascinated with those little brand new people for whom every day contained more questions about the way the world worked. He also deeply enjoyed their capacity for causing various scales of creative chaos.

Human children, in their turn, had a fascination with Crowley. He had a vintage car, always dressed fashionably, gave the appearance of not caring what anyone thought of him and he radiated an aura of ‘disreputable uncle your parents disapprove of who will come pick you up from the police station no questions asked’. This, as far as the older ones were concerned, marked him as ‘cool’.

(Younger children simply sensed that he was a reliable source of sugar. Finding out that providing small children with sugar could cause a chain of chaos and exasperated parents had been one of Crowley’s earliest and most entertaining discoveries in the service of Hell. He’d earned a minor commendation for it.)

“I think,” Aziraphale said, interrupting Crowley before he could re-hash their main grievance with Dumbledore, “that we have reached something of an impasse. You want us to return Harry to the Dursleys, we categorically refuse to. You could try to take him by force, but as you’ve seen from your earlier attempts that would not be the course of wisdom. So unless there’s something we can actually help you with, I advise you to take your leave.”

Dumbledore regarded them both steadily for a moment and then reached into his pocket, withdrew an envelope and handed it to Aziraphale. “Harry’s acceptance letter from Hogwarts,” he said. “Do you intend to prevent him from attending?”

Aziraphale and Crowley looked at each other.

“Didn’t intend to before,” Crowley said slowly, watching Aziraphale for any sign of disagreement. “Of course now that we know you’re running the place, Mister Bad-Decisions, we might change our minds.”

“The subject requires consideration,” Aziraphale agreed. “Naturally, his education is important to us. And of course, Hogwarts is the premier school of magic in Britain.”

“Also the only,” Dumbledore said with a smile.

Aziraphale smiled back. “So it is said.”

“Term begins on September 1st,” Dumbledore told them. “It is imperative, now more than ever that he receives instruction on how to control his magic. So I would take it as a kindness if you would ensure that Harry catches the Hogwarts Express.”

“And if we don’t?” Crowley asked.

Dumbledore rose to his feet and carefully placed his teacup back on the table. It was still full. “Then you will hear from me again.”

“I have no doubt,” Aziraphale said politely. “Please feel free to contact us whenever convenient. I only request that you use the telephone or non-magical mail. I try to avoid having birds in the shop. You’ll find my phone number is in the yellow pages.”

“Now get lost,” Crowley added.

* * *

Aziraphale shut the door of the bookshop firmly. Then he watched through the windows as the headmaster of Hogwarts walked away. Only when he was absolutely sure that the man was gone did he turn to look at Crowley.

“What a wanker,” Crowley said, feelingly.

“Crowley!”

“What? He is!”

“He was right about one thing,” Aziraphale said. “Harry needs to learn how to use his abilities, my dear.”

“Doesn’t mean he needs to go anywhere near that idiot. We can teach him anything he needs to know, angel!” Crowley insisted.

“Can we?” Aziraphale questioned. “The end result of our abilities is certainly similar, but the source is not the same.”

“The basic fundamentals are though. Intent, focus, will. That’s the basis for any magic, angel. Human or – or our kind.”

“True,” Aziraphale conceded, “but the social aspect of education is important as well, Crowley. Harry has been far too isolated from children his own age. That cousin of his was encouraged by his parents to make sure Harry didn’t make any friends at school. He needs to learn how to interact with people who are not authority figures.”

Crowley looked vaguely insulted. “Are you implying I’m an authority figure? Me?”

“Well, aren’t you? From Harry’s point of view?”

Crowley’s face became a picture of chagrined horror.

“Don’t worry,” Aziraphale said kindly. “I promise not to let anyone know what a responsible adult you’ve turned out to be.”

Crowley grumbled quietly to himself for a minute, before reaching across and taking Aziraphale’s hand.

“My dear?” the angel enquired. “What is it?”

“Angel . . . Remember how we were only going to look after Harry for a few days before we found someone responsible to take care of him, or school started?”

Aziraphale paused. “Ah. Yes.”

“Seems to me you’re thinking a bit more long term now.”

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale admitted softly. He looked at Crowley, his expression stubborn yet very fragile. “I meant to discuss it with you properly, dearest,” he said in a rush, “but then that mage turned up and we were dealing with him and I just didn’t get the chance. I know it’ll be an interruption, but it’ll only be seven years before he’s an adult and what’s less than a decade to people like us and he _needs_ us Crowley-”

“Angel, angel,” Crowley said squeezing Aziraphale’s hand. “It’s alright. It was me who wanted to keep him in the first place, remember?”

“Yes, but you didn’t mention years and I didn’t want to make a decision like this without your say so!”

“You haven’t. We’re making it together, now. We’re keeping him. If,” Crowley finished, raising his voice slightly and looking in a particular direction, “that’s okay with you, Harry?”

There was the curious sound of someone suddenly trying not to breathe from behind a bookshelf. It was followed by a coughing fit.

“Oh,” Aziraphale sighed. “Eavesdropping on that entire conversation, I suppose? Why am I not surprised?”

“Because you know a clever kid when you see one,” Crowley said happily. He grinned at Harry, who had poked his head out from behind a bookshelf. “Don’t feel so bad, kid. It takes skill to eavesdrop properly on me. But not to worry, we’ve got plenty of time to teach you proper stealth.”

Harry squared his shoulders and marched over to them. “Did you mean it?” he asked, his voice only barely shaking. “I can stay? Till I’m a grown up?”

“Yes dear,” Aziraphale assured him gently. “Welcome home.”


	11. Research

_Mr. Fell and Mr. Crow,_

_To London town they did go._

_Mr Crow and Mr Fell,_

_Not one secret did they tell._

_\- Children's nursery rhyme, Yorkshire. c.1750_

* * *

Anathema Device was a witch. She could see auras, knew herb-lore and her scrying skills were frankly impressive. However, since she had not gone to a formal school to learn spells and wouldn’t be able to use a wand even if someone handed it to her with annotated instructions, while she might have some useful skills and knew of the existence of the magical world, as far as various magical ministries were concerned, she was not, in fact, a witch. An unusual squib perhaps, but not a witch.

Anathema Device, professional descendant of one of the most prolific and accurate seers ever to walk the earth, was aware of the views that the various magical ministries had of people like her. She was also aware that those views were so much horse-shit. Still, one could only take so much condescension on a daily basis, so Anathema (and indeed many of her ancestors) tended to avoid wizarding society on the whole.

That didn’t mean she _ignored_ it though. True, the formerly impending apocalypse had taken up most of her concentration for the last ten years, but she was still well aware that a very vicious Dark wizard had gained power in Britain only to be apparently defeated by an infant. Thus, when an angel and a demon who she’d met briefly at the cancelled End of The World turned up at her door with a boy around the same age as the former antichrist, a single glance at the boy was sufficient to identify him as one Harry James Potter.

It was also enough to tell her that there was something very, very wrong with his aura.

“Hello, book girl!” the demon in her doorway said cheerfully. He was bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. “Mind if we come in?”

Anathema pulled her gaze away from the extremely twisted up aura in front of her and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Do I have a choice?”

“Not really,” said the demon, at the same time that the angel said ‘but of course, my dear!’

There was a pause as they exchanged glances. Then the demon made a noise of exasperation. “Okay, so you do,” he admitted. “But you seem like the kind of human who wouldn’t leave visitors standing on your doorstep.” He gave her a boyishly cheeky grin. The angel followed it with a hopeful smile. The boy between them just looked confused.

_Proof that you really don’t know me at all_, Anathema thought_. In fact we’ve never even exchanged names_. _Still, I’m dying to know how Harry freaking Potter_ _ended up in your company._

(She did know the angel’s name. There was only one angel referred to as the Guardian of the Eastern Gate and unearthing his name hadn’t been difficult. The demon’s name on the other hand had never come up. Agnes had referred to him as the Serpent and had predicted the fiery yet temporary demise of his vintage car. But she hadn’t mentioned his name. One of Anathema’s ancestors had suggested he might be Asmodeus and another had guessed Mephistopheles, but it had never been settled one way or another.)

“All right,” Anathema said. “I suppose you’d better come in then.”

She led them through the hallway to the kitchen, noting as they followed her that the demon’s only reaction to the evil-repelling horseshoe over her front door was to roll his shoulders and grumble to himself, as though he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. Anathema wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, so she just tucked the fact away for proper consideration later.

“So,” Anathema said, once she’d put the kettle on and unearthed some tea bags. “Any particular reason you dropped by, or were you just in the area? And are you going to introduce me to your friend?” She smiled at the boy. He still looked faintly confused. Around him, his bizarre aura shifted uneasily.

“Ah, yes!”, the demon said. He had been slouching against the kitchen counter, but at Anathema’s words he straightened up. “Harry, this is Book Girl.” He gestured in Anathema’s direction.

“Her name is Anathema Device, dearest,” the angel sighed, somewhat in the background. “Descendant of Agnes Nutter, who was herself a notable witch and the most accurate seer in the last thousand years,” he explained to the boy.

“Right,” said the demon, whose name Anathema still hadn’t got, “s’ what I said. Book girl, this is our boy, Harry.”

Anathema blinked. “Your boy,” she said slowly, emphasising the pronoun as Harry gave her a shy wave and smile.

To Anathema’s surprise, the demon beamed at her, displaying his very white teeth with a wide grin.. “Yep! We asked, he said yes, he’s ours now.”

“I see,” said Anathema. Inwardly, the implications of those casual words made part of her shriek in a muddled combination of fascination, shock, and slight horror. Fortunately for her composure, the kettle finished boiling just then and Anathema took the opportunity to collect her thoughts while arranging the cups of tea and rummaging in the cupboard for a packet of biscuits.

So,” she asked in an admirably level voice, once all of her guests had been provided with refreshments. “What can I do for you?”

The angel took an appreciative sip of tea and smiled at her. “Ms Device,” he said politely. “We were wondering if we might have a word with you about human magical society. As we said, we’ve just taken custody of Harry here, and our last interactions with- “ and here the angel paused a moment as if considering his next words. Finally he continued “with others capable of magic, well, were quite some time ago.” He coughed slightly. “Barring an unfortunate incident earlier this week. So we thought consulting you might help bring us up to date.”

As Anathema absorbed his words the angel turned to the boy- _Harry Potter! –_ and explained: “Ms Device is a mage like yourself, my dear.”

Harry, who was in the process of devouring a custard cream, gave her a fascinated look.

“Well,” Anathema said judiciously. “Not quite like yourself. I wouldn’t get any results with a wand. A bread knife is more my speed. My talents lie in other areas.”

At this, the demon waved his hand dismissively. “Well, whatever. It’s all human magic anyway. Basically the same.”

“Not according to the current Ministries of magic,” said Anathema. “And most of the previous ones too,” she added, scowling at the air in general. “Short-sighted, hidebound idiots,” she added, mostly to herself.

“Still,” the demon insisted, as he idly handed the angel another biscuit, “you’re up to date with current affairs, magically speaking.”

“I suppose so,” Anathema conceded. She eyed them speculatively. “What would you like to know?”

The demon’s grin became very wide.

* * *

“Oh for goodness sake, Vernon! Just turn that thing off!”

Petunia Dursley was having a bad day. She’d just paid for her hot water tank to be repaired for the third time in a week and the dratted thing had sprung a leak _again_, the fridge freezer was back on the blink and her husband was still failing to fix the volume control on the radio.

“I’ve almost got it, Petunia,” her husband protested, just as the volume dial, which he was attempting to adjust with a screwdriver, detached from radio with a jump and struck him in the forehead.

“I want to break freee!” the radio shrilled as Vernon Dursley swore and rubbed at his forehead. “I want to break free from your lies-“

Abruptly, the sound of Queen at full volume cut out as Petunia wrenched the radio’s plug out of its socket. She sighed in relief.

“Blasted thing,” Vernon grumbled, stooping down to pick up the remains of the dial. “Now it’ll be harder to fix.”

“Why don’t you just take it for repair?” Petunia asked.

Vernon snorted loudly. “Repairs! Hah. Not a chance! I’ve had every bleeding repairman going in and out the house ‘repairing’ things for us all week and half the appliances in the house still don’t work. I’ve had enough of repairmen. Bloody parasites!”

“Well buy a new one then!”

Vernon scowled. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to give that stupid boy at the Harris’ Electrical the satisfaction,” he said, in the tone of a grown man who has been taking his frustration out on minimum wage workers for the past week. “Going to do it meself.”

“Not in this kitchen, you’re not,” Petunia said. “I’ve had that blasted radio screaming at me for days. It’ll be nice to finally have a bit of peace and quiet in my own kitchen. Take that rubbish out to the garden shed if you’re going to be fiddling with it.”

Vernon had no retort to this and he subsided into muttered grumbles, gathered up the radio and left the kitchen. Finally, silence reigned. Petunia allowed herself another sigh of relief.

Then the sound of the knocker being thwacked heavily against the front door broke the blessed silence.

“Oh what is it now?!” Petunia snapped, throwing up her hands.

The knock came again and Petunia gave in and stomped bad-temperedly to the front door. She pulled it open, glaring pre-emptively at whoever was out there.

Albus Dumbledore gave her a polite smile.

The intensity of Petunia’s glare increased.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “It’s you. What do you want now? Found the dratted boy yet?”

“Yes,” said Dumbledore, and a very, very tiny knot in Petunia’s stomach that had been there since the day her nephew had gone missing uncurled. “You’ll be glad to hear that he’s safe and sound.”

Petunia sniffed. “Where is he then?” she asked, trying to peer around Dumbledore. “Haven’t you brought him back yet?”

“Not quite yet,” Dumbledore said pleasantly. “I wanted to have a word with you first.”

“Oh yes? About what?” she asked, a slight shiver going down her spine. Dumbledore’s expression was still pleasant and friendly but something in his eyes made her feel uneasy.

“The cupboard, Petunia,” Dumbledore said, stepping across the threshold as Petunia backed away from him. The shiver going down her spine turned into a sharp spike of ice. “I want hear about the cupboard under the stairs.”

* * *

To Crowley and Aziraphale’s surprise, the current state of the wizarding world was not that much different from their last encounter with it some centuries ago. Most children were still educated at Hogwarts, the Wizengamot still existed in much the same form, and Wizarding Britain still did all it’s banking at Gringott’s.

“Really?” Aziraphale asked in response to a fact Anathema had just reeled off. He was now ensconced on the sofa in Anathema’s front room. Harry sat next to him, with Crowley perched on the arm of the sofa on Harry’s other side. “Diagon Alley is still the main magical thoroughfare?”

“Pretty much,” Anathema confirmed. “Wizarding London hasn’t had a proper expansion in over a century. As far as I know there was some talk about adding another street a couple of years ago, but the idea got shelved pretty quickly. Too much possibility for things to get, um, awkward, if everything wasn’t planned carefully.”

Crowley snorted quietly. “No kidding.”

Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, magical construction does come with its own unique pitfalls. So, Diagon Alley then! There was a wonderful little café there the last time I visited,” he reminisced. “The coffee was exquisite. And the pastries!” The angel sighed happily in remembrance.

“Sounds like it could still be there, angel,” Crowley pointed out. “We could check it out, see if it’s still as good as you remember.”

Aziraphale beamed happily at him and Crowley resisted the urge to bask like a snake in the sun. He had a reputation to keep up in front of the witch after all.

“So,” he said, turning his gaze back on the witch, “what’s the deal with this Dumbledore? He said he was the headmaster of Hogwarts, but he acted like he was a lot more important than a typical schoolmaster.”

“That,” said Anathema carefully, “is because he is. Albus Dumbledore is one of the most talented, powerful wizards in the world. He has a lot of influence and a lot of connections, here and internationally. He’s highly respected, especially for his opposition to, er-“

She paused and glanced awkwardly at Harry, who had been listening interestedly to her quick summary of Wizarding Britain.

“To Voldemort,” Aziraphale finished for her. “Yes, we heard that bit from Mr Dumbledore, although I confess I wasn’t sure how much to take at face value.” He smiled at Anathema. “Thank you. You’ve cleared up quite a few things for us.”

Anathema nodded, a relieved look in her face. Crowley guessed that she hadn’t wanted to plunge into a long discussion about Voldemort in front of the boy whose parents had been murdered by him and was grateful to Aziraphale for side-stepping the subject.

“So,” Crowley murmured, shifting slightly on the arm of the sofa. “Powerful political figure, as well as school headmaster. OK. Good to know.” He looked at Aziraphale. “I think we’ve heard everything, angel. Time to head home?” He tilted slightly towards Anathema. “Unless there’s anything else you can tell us?”

Before she could answer, there was a knock at Anathema’s front door followed by the sound of excited young voices calling her name.

She raised her index finger at her guests. “Actually there is something I want a word about. Hang on,” she said, and went back out to the hallway.

* * *

When Anathema answered the door for the second time that day it was, as she had expected, Adam Young and his friends outside. They swarmed into her hallway, chattering excitedly and hurling questions at her.

“- and we saw the fanciest car, you know-“

“- like the guy with sunglasses-“

“-and the one who dresses like he’s a hundred and fifty years old-“

“-are they here?”

“ – today?”

“-is there going to be more weird stuff going on?”

“Nah,” said the demon’s voice casually from just behind Anathema’s shoulder. “Just visiting.”

An involuntary shiver made its way up Anathema’s spine. She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. She wanted to blame the noise of Adam and his enthusiastic friends, but she knew that they weren’t that loud. Once again she reminded herself that though he had helped stop the apocalypse, the man behind her was eldritch creature who was thousands of years old. She shouldn’t drop her guard just because he was being friendly.

(Or for that matter just because his aura showed that he was wholly, devotedly and incredibly sappily in love with the angel sitting in her parlour.)

“Why’re you visiting Anathema?” Adam asked. He eyed the demon sternly. “You promised there’d be no more meddling.”

To Anathema’s surprise and curiosity, the demon looked suddenly awkward.

“No meddling,” he protested, attempting injured innocence. “Just doing some research.”

All four children gave him sceptical looks of varying intensity.

“What do _you_ need to do research about?” Pepper demanded.

“Adult stuff,” the demon replied vaguely, after a moment’s thought.

“That sounds like you are meddling and just don’t want to admit it,” Pepper said flatly. She crossed her arms and glared at him.

Adam nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”

“Or it could just be boring,” Brian said.

“Or you’re meddling _and_ it’s boring,” finished Wensleydale.

The demon sighed in apparent exasperation. “I promise that I am not meddling with humanity. In general. Nor am I ever boring.”

“So who are you meddling with in particular?” Pepper shot at him instantly.

“People who richly deserve it,” the demon replied. “I promise,” he added. Anathema couldn’t see the demon’s snake-like eyes behind his sunglasses, but she had the distinct feeling that he was avoiding Adam’s gaze.

“But why are you visiting Anathema?” Adam asked again. Clearly he was not going to be put off.

The demon sagged slightly and opened his mouth to reply. However, before he could answer, another voice from behind Anathema asked “Excuse me Miss Device, can you tell me where bathroom is, please?”

Anathema turned to face Harry, who was standing shyly behind her. About to tell him to head up the little stairs and take the first door on the left, she was interrupted by Adam, who, distracted from his questioning of the demon by Harry’s appearance, introduced himself and his friends at speed, proudly finishing “and we’re The Them. Who are you? Where’re you from?”

“I’m Harry,” Harry answered. He seemed somewhat dazed by Adam’s exuberant friendliness. “I live with Crowley and Aziraphale.”

_Crowley? _thought Anathema. _The Serpent of Eden is called Crowley?_

She felt vaguely disappointed. She’d always come down on the Asmodeus side whenever the family argument-slash-discussion came up.

“Do his Mum and Dad know you’re meddling with him?” Adam asked Crowley, serious again.

“My Mum and Dad died when I was a baby.”

There was silence following this quiet but definite announcement. Then Pepper smacked the top of Adam’s head. “Sorry about him,” she said to Harry. “Sometimes he forgets that not everyone has the patriarchal ideal of family.” She held out her hand to Harry and he shook it gingerly. “I’m Pepper.”

“Yes,” said Harry. He nodded towards Adam. “He said.”

The older-than-his-years air Adam sometimes had vanished and he became nothing more than a twelve-year-old boy who’d put his foot in his mouth and was now deeply uncomfortable. “Sorry,” he said, his face flushing. “I didn’t mean to . . .” he trailed off, awkwardness rising off him like steam.

A few seconds went by, during which Adam continued to squirm uncomfortably. Privately, Anathema thought it was good for him. He was a little too self-assured a lot of the time. He had been ever since the incident at the airfield.

Eventually Harry shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

“It’s my birthday today,” Pepper said suddenly, apparently deciding that she’d had enough of the boys’ awkwardness and was going to bulldoze through it until it went away. “I’m twelve. We’re having the party at the playground at one. D’you wanna come? There’s going to be cake.”

Anathema’s gaze swung towards the demon – _Crowley_, she repeated to herself, _his name is Crowley_ – “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, answering the unspoken _Can I?_ in Harry’s hopeful expression.

Harry’s face brightened momentarily, then a worried frown crossed it. “Aziraphale won’t mind, will he?” Harry asked hesitantly.

“Nahhh,” said Crowley. “Not if the cake’s good enough.”

“It’s my mum’s Madeira,” Pepper told the demon. “She does it with home-made jam and fresh cream and strawberries and it’s _perfect.”_

“Oh that sounds lovely,” said a voice directly behind Anathema, and she resisted the urge to jump to the ceiling for the second time that day_. Honestly, _she thought_, I expected the demon to sneak up on me, but I’d’ve thought the angel would have the decency to make some noise!_

“Sorry to startle you, my dear,” Aziraphale said apologetically. “I heard the voices and thought I’d best come and find you all.” He nodded to the Them. “Hello again.”

There was a chorus of hellos and then Pepper repeated her invitation to Aziraphale. He accepted quickly, wishing the girl a happy birthday and Anathema, who was sensitive to such things, could feel the blessing settle softly on Pepper like warm sunshine.

Adam, his equilibrium restored by the prospect of cake, started to ask Harry what kinds of games he liked and whether he thought pirates or astronauts would win in a fight. Harry, tenseness now forgotten, came down on the side of the pirates and then Adam, a thought striking him, asked “when’s your birthday Harry?”

There was a moment of silence, in which both of Anathema’s non-human visitors looked at each other in consternation. Anathema suspected (correctly) that they’d overlooked the subject of birthdays.

“Oh,” said Harry in a small voice, flushing to the roots of his hair. “It’s today actually. I’m eleven.”

The Them looked at one another.

“That,” said Adam, “is definitely serious.”

“Definitely,” agreed Brian and Wensleydale together.

“It is?” said Harry apprehensively. Behind him, his guardians were exchanging a worried glance.

“Yes,” said Pepper, her eyes gleaming. “It means that we can talk Mum into making a second cake.” She turned to her three friends. “Come on,” she said urgently, “if there’s gonna be enough time for an extra cake, we’ve got to let Mum know right away.”

With that, the Them piled out Anathema’s doorway and ran to their bikes which had been neatly leant against her garden wall.

“Remember,” Adam shouted as they cycled off. “The playground at one o’ clock!”

* * *

“Oh for goodness sake, Shacklebolt. Keep your head down! Have you forgotten all your training?”

Kingsley Shacklebolt snorted quietly and crouched behind the cover of a particularly thorny hedge. He eyed his companion narrowly. “No I haven’t. But maybe I’m not happy with spying on children’s birthday parties,” he said. “There’s a name for that type of person and I’m usually locking them up, not imitating them,” he muttered, more to himself than Moody.

“Alright, alright,” Moody groused. “Just let me get a good look at them,” he said. “Then we’ll withdraw.”

The older wizard turned back to stare at the party. The children had begun a game of tag and their happy shrieks drifted across the summer air. Off to one side, the possible dark wizards were at a picnic table drinking wine while they kept an eye on Potter. The hedge-witch and her boyfriend were sat with them, chatting quietly. The other children’s parents were sat at the opposite picnic table, on which lay the remains of two extremely good cakes. They were engaged in a loud discussion about what sounded like local politics.

“Alright,” Moody said, to himself this time. “Let’s have a look at you two.” He concentrated on the dark wizards and focused his magical eye, deciding to start with the blond one first. “What are you hiding?”

This was the last coherent thing he said for quite some time.


	12. Research II

_This history translated from an earlier book in the language of Briton, presented to me by Archdeacon Walter of Oxford and to him by Esdras the Pale, monk of Lindisfarne, an living descendant of Ser Asarifel, Knight of Camelot_ \- Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain. c. 1135

* * *

**_Twenty minutes earlier_**.

‘I don’t know how powerful you really are compared to the majority of human magic-users,” Anathema paused to swallow a mouthful of cake and gestured vaguely in Harry’s direction with her fork to indicate that she was referring to wand-users.

‘Very,” Crowley replied with a particularly satisfied smirk. He watched Harry chasing after Adam and the Them for a moment before adding, “when the opponent isn’t the Anti-Christ going through a power trip.”

“Right,” Anathema said, as she delicately speared another piece of birthday cake with her fork . “But how strong would you be against a group? Ten or twelve, all using wand magic, all firing it at you?”

“I have to admit,” Aziraphale said, looking down at his empty plate with a worried frown, “that that situation would somewhat of a problem for us.”

“_And_ if the humans also knew exactly what type of being they were dealing with?” Anathema asked, as the angel fiddled with the half-empty wine-glass in his hands. “What then?”

“Mm,” said Crowley. “Good point. That would be trouble.” He grimaced and absentmindedly placed another slice of cake on Aziraphale’s plate “It’s been a while since I was summoned on the regular and I’d really rather not have to deal with the ‘foul demon, you are bound to my will’ routine again.”

“Dreadful business,” Aziraphale said with a shake of his head. He reached across the table and squeezed Crowley’s hand sympathetically.

“And so _tacky_,” Crowley complained. “Honestly, the most recent ones were just pathetic. No one puts an effort in anymore. Half the time they were dressed like Darth bloody Vader.”

Aziraphale’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Who?”

“Don’t worry about it angel,” Crowley said with a sigh. “Film reference. I’ll explain later.” Then he brightened up. “It’s just your sort of story. We can watch it together.”

“So,” Anathema said pointedly, after a few minutes passed during which her supernatural guests gazed at each other adoringly, apparently having forgotten the rest of the world existed, “unless you want to deal with that kind of situation, you’re probably better off letting Harry go to Hogwarts. At least initially.”

Demon and angel shared another, considerably more dubious gaze.

“There are other schools of magic,” Crowley muttered.

“But as we now know, Dumbledore has an outsized amount of influence in the magical community,” said Aziraphale. “Ms Device is right, my dear, things could get very awkward. If either one of us were to get discorporated . . . well, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.”

Crowley scowled and made a noise halfway between a grunt and a growl. “I don’t want Harry anywhere near him, angel. He’s done enough damage as it is.”

“Um,” said Newton Pulsifer. The young witchfinder hadn’t said much up until now, except to compliment Crowley on the Bentley and so reddened when Crowley and Aziraphale’s gazes fell on him.

“Yes dear boy?” Aziraphale said gently when no further words appeared to be forthcoming.

“Well,” said Newt hesitantly, “This wizard guy. He does sound a bit of a wanker and all.”

Crowley snorted. “That’s the understatement of the year.”

“Well,” said Newt again, “he sounds like the kind of wanker whose reputation is important to him. And, it sounds like you guys could ruin his reputation pretty thoroughly-“

“Only by disclosing what Harry has suffered to the general public,” Aziraphale interjected, “and I won’t do that without Harry’s consent.”

“Me neither,” agreed Crowley. “Might be what Dumbledore deserves, but it could hurt Harry too.” The glitter in his serpentine eyes was strangely visible even behind his sunglasses. “And we’re not doing _anything_ that might hurt Harry.”

“Right,” said Newt very carefully, “but uh, does the wizard guy know that?”

Angel and demon shared yet another glance.

“He does,” said Aziraphale slowly, “we told him as much. But, I think, he may not _believe_ it.” A sudden gleam appeared in Aziraphale’s angelic blue eyes and he smiled serenely.

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley, who had seen that particular gleam on several occasions and knew what kind of trouble it entailed, “what are you thinking?”

“Oh nothing,” said Aziraphale innocently. “Just a stray thought.”

Crowley eyed the angel suspiciously for a moment and then shrugged. “All right. Tell me later then. We’ve got more pressing things to worry about anyway.”

“Like getting that thing out of Harry’s head?” Anathema suggested.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, taking a sip of his wine. “You noticed that.”

“Hard not to,” Anathema replied. “It’s not every day I meet someone with part of someone else’s soul jammed in his head. His aura is a _mess_.”

Aziraphale and Crowley stared at her.

“Someone else’s _what_?” Aziraphale managed eventually, while Crowley made incoherent attempts at speech.

“Soul,” Anathema repeated. She looked at them curiously. “Didn’t you know?”

“I mean, yeah, kinda,” Crowley gabbled, once he’d finally got his throat under control. “Could see it. Horrible thing, stinks to high, urgh, heaven, magically speaking. We weren’t totally sure what it actually was though.”

“A soul fragment,” said Aziraphale, horror edging his words. He leaned towards Anathema, eyes fixed on the young witch. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” said Anathema. “There’s no mistaking that. Is it . . . is it whose I think it is?”

“Very likely,” Aziraphale said heavily, leaning back again. He gazed in Harry’s direction, his face unnaturally pale. Across from him, Crowley’s face had developed a similar sickly hue.

“Um,” said Newt, nervously joining the conversation once again. “Can’t you just, you know?” He waved his hand in a vague gesture.

Crowley shook his head. “No. Regular old miracle won’t do. It’s in his brain. Delicate area, that. Could cause a real mess if we’re not careful. That’s why we hadn’t got rid of it so far. Been looking for a way to go about it, but-” Crowley made an indistinct noise in the back of throat. “Still, now we know what it is, should be able to make some headway.” The demon winced. “In a manner of speaking.”

Aziraphale shuddered. “I knew that thing was wrong when I saw it, but this . . .” He trailed off, his face twisting in disgust.

A second later it twisted in surprise and Aziraphale lurched to his feet, scanning the playground anxiously.

Crowley was beside him in a moment. “Angel? What’s wrong?” The demon also glanced round, his face still pale and his fists clenching.

“Someone,” Aziraphale gasped, “was peeking. I’m sure of it. Can you sense anyone?”

Crowley frowned in concentration. “No one from our respective sides . . . no, wait, there. Human mages! Azssiraphale, watch Harry!” So saying, Crowley darted across the playground and vaulted over a hedge, disappearing from sight.

A second later, there was a loud _crack! _as if someone had broken a particularly dry branch. Crowley reappeared from the behind the hedge, brushing dust off his jacket and cursing under his breath. “Lost them,” he said furiously when Aziraphale, Anathema and Newt joined him a moment later. “Two wizards. The buggers teleported before I could stop them.”

“Is everything alright?” asked a concerned voice, and the group turned to see Pepper’s mother approaching them.

“Oh er, fine yes,” Aziraphale said quickly. “Nothing to worry about. Crowley just thought he saw a particularly rare butterfly and got rather excited.”

“Really?” said Pepper’s mother, eyeing them all rather dubiously.

“Oh yes,” said Crowley smoothly, as he continued to brush off bits of hedge, “thought I caught a glance of a High Brown Fritillary!”

“A high brown what?”

“Fritillary,” said Crowley, and he launched into lecture on the habits and habitats of one of England’s rarest butterflies. Eventually Pepper’s mother, a glazed expression on her face, made an excuse and edged away as politely as possible from the flood of butterfly related facts.

Newt stared at the demon and Anathema raised her own eyebrows at Aziraphale. “He, uh, knows a lot about butterflies.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Well, you know, after a couple of thousand years you try a lot of different ways to pass the time. I believe Crowley picked up a Doctorate in Lepidopterology in the early eighties.”

“Seventies, angel. And I wanted to know if the buggers were a danger to my plants, that’s all.” Then Crowley’s expression darkened. “What I want to know now is how those mages got here.” He jerked his thumb towards Harry and the Them who were still so engaged of a game of pirates versus astronauts that they hadn’t noticed Crowley’s sudden acceleration and leap across the hedge. “I thought we’d stopped anyone from scrying on Harry.”

“We have,” Aziraphale protested. “It shouldn’t be possible for any human mage to locate Harry with magic.”

“They couldn’t just follow you from your shop?” Newt asked. “In a car, is what I mean.”

“I have spent six thousand years watching our backs and keeping an eye out for anyone who might be spying on us!” Crowley hissed. “I’m not going to miss a couple of humans in a _car_.”

“Er,” said Aziraphale.

“What?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said awkwardly, “when Uriel and Sandalphon turned up to, er, warn me just before everything really kicked off. . . They did strongly imply that they had evidence of our . . . association. Going back some centuries.”

Crowley stared at him for a moment and then clapped a hand over his eyes. His sunglasses, pushed out of their normal position, wobbled precariously.

“I missed a couple of humans following us in a car, didn’t I?”

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s other hand sympathetically. “Yes dear. I think we both did.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Anathema, “but when you said you felt someone ‘peeking’? What did you mean by that?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, “you’re aware that our bodies – Crowley’s and mine, I mean – are not precisely our true selves? If they get killed or injured it’s inconvenient, but it isn’t precisely-“

“The end of the world?” Crowley suggested, relaxing slightly, his mouth curving in a sly grin.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Yes, you could put it like that.” He turned back to the two humans. “We are ethereal beings-“

“Occult.”

“Yes dear. Ethereal _and_ occult beings. And as such our bodies are more comparable to, oh I don’t know, a comfortable set of clothes. They make it easier to go outside and interact with the material plane but they aren’t exactly essential.” Aziraphale stopped and considered the reaction he might get if he were discorporated now and returned to heaven. “Or at least, they weren’t before we rebelled against our respective sides. Anyway,” he finished, “my point is that very occasionally, in the right circumstances, or with the right tools a human can see what’s er-“

“Underneath the angelic lingerie.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes at the grinning demon. “Yes, all right dear, I regret that metaphor already.”

Anathema remembered with sudden clarity the actual physical descriptions of angels in the bible. “Oh. _Oh. _Eurgh.”

“Thanks very much, Book Girl.”

“Alright,” said Aziraphale, ignoring the glare Anathema was aiming at Crowley, “we’ve all had enough excitement for today I think. Time to go home.”

* * *

Much later, back at the bookshop after a drive back to London with a sleepy, happy eleven-year-old dozing in the back of the car, Aziraphale made two cups of tea, sat himself down in his favourite chair and broached the subject of when to explain to the boy about the unwanted passenger in his head.

“Oh yes, Happy Birthday, Harry,” the demon lounging on the sofa said mock-cheerfully, “oh by the way, there’s a piece of the person who tried to murder you stuck inside your head. And we’re having a little trouble getting it out.”

“All right, perhaps not just yet,” Aziraphale conceded. “But we do have to tell him eventually.”

“Sure,” Crowley said. “About ten years from now, when he’s finished school and any murdering bastards are safely dealt with.”

“Yes . . .” Aziraphale said, drawing out the word. “How do you suggest they should be dealt with, as a matter of interest?”

“I was thinking the centre of the sun.”

Aziraphale looked at him. “My dear,” he said gently, “you have tempted and wiled and terrified your way through humanity for the last six thousand years, but you and I both know that you’ve never killed anyone directly.”

Crowley snorted. “Yes I have. Remember the Nazis.”

“Yes dear. You redirected where a bomb was due to fall but the pilot chose to drop it. They’d have survived if they ran when you told them to.”

“Okay yes, never mind the Nazis. What about that jailer in the Bastille? During the reign of terror!”

“I swapped his clothes and he was dragged off by his fellows. I don’t recall you physically dropping the blade. For all we know, his friends recognised him in time and he lived.” Aziraphale paused and took the demon’s hand in his. “You’ve always given people a chance, Crowley. Everyone you’ve tempted has had the option to say no. Are you really going to change now?”

“Oh come on, angel! Look at what he’s done! What he’s tried to do to Harry! We can’t just do nothing!”

“You know as well as I do that it’s for humans to sort out their own affairs,” Aziraphale pointed out gently. “Both our former sides meddled far too much for far too long in this world. We ourselves promised Adam that there would be no more of it. Humanity has to find its own way in the world.”

“So, what?” Crowley demanded. “You’re just going to let him attack Harry? Because he will, Angel. People like Voldemort don’t change, not at this stage. You give them a choice and they pick the shit one. Every time.”

“Of course I’m not going to let him attack Harry,” Aziraphale said. “But neither do I want you committing murder!”

“’S not murder if he attacks me first. Self-defense, right?”

Aziraphale’s face wore a pained expression. “Crowley, please.”

“Alright, alright,” Crowley agreed moodily. “I get it angel, I do. We can’t do all the heavy lifting for the humans or they’ll stop making the effort to do anything themselves.”

“Precisely.”

“But if any partially soulless bugger comes within a hundred feet of Harry-“

“Then you will have to be very quick indeed if you intend to relocate him to the sun, because I will be right behind you and aiming for a black hole.”

Crowley’s eyebrows rose. “Vicious.”

“Thank you dear, I’m glad you approve.”

* * *

_ **Hogwarts Castle, Scotland.** _

Kingsley Shacklebolt looked down at Alastor Moody. The elder auror was now sedated and sleeping peacefully in the Hogwarts infirmary. On the other side of the bed, Albus Dumbledore was regarding Moody’s prone body with a worried frown. Kingsley eyed the headmaster carefully and willed his facial muscles into a grave neutral expression rather than the furious scowl they were itching to form into.

“And you say he was raving about-“

“Eyes,” repeated Kingsley. “Eyes everywhere. He started screaming about it seconds after he woke up.”

“Hmm. He was not referring to his own eyes by any chance?”

“Doubt it. I specifically recall him screaming about thousands of them. Headmaster, whoever these wizards really are, they have powerful protections and they’re skilled. The skinny one, Crowley? Damn near had me. If I’d apparated us even a second slower I don’t think we’d be here right now. The man moves like a snake.”

“An interesting comparison. Have you found out anything else about them?” Dumbledore enquired.

Kingsley kept his expression grave, but allowed some puzzlement to leak in. “One or two things. A. Z. Fell & Co has been in business and run by the same family since the late seventeen hundreds. The business was started by the current owner’s great-great-great-grandfather. Ezra Fell is known to occasionally buy magical tomes in muggle auctions, and has some contact with collectors in the wizarding community. Otherwise, barring Anthony J Crowley, most of the people he associates with are muggles.”

“Anything else?”

“I also talked to a contact of mine in the muggle police,” Kingsley continued. “They’ve been keeping track of Fell too.”

“Oh?” Dumbledore’s gaze sharpened. “Did your contact say why?”

“They suspect Fell of being involved in organised crime.”

Kingsley felt rather vindicated when Dumbledore stared at him. _You weren’t expecting that, were you_ he thought. “It seems,” he said, “that Fell has been chasing off attempts from the mob to buy his bookshop for the last thirty years, if not longer. His taxes are perfect, he never gets so much as a parking ticket and the word around Soho is that anyone who threatens him in any way either soon becomes a model citizen or just completely disappears. And he likes snakes.”

Dumbledore digested this for a moment. “And Anthony Crowley? What of him?”

“Anthony J Crowley,” Kingsley recited. “Acts as Fell’s driver. Almost certainly involved in the mob as well, known to do unusual favours for people, almost always asks for even more unusual favours in return. Very close associate of Fell. His father, Anthony Sr. was well known in Soho in the sixties. Apparently the current Crowley is his spitting image. Anthony J never goes anywhere without his sunglasses on.” Kingsley paused. “Has a known soft spot for children.”

“Children? Really?”

Kingsley nodded and relaxing slightly about the whole situation despite himself. His contact in the muggle police had been very definite. “Crowley’s reputation for favours leads the desperate to him. According to my contact, that included a woman whose little girl had gone missing. She and her husband had been going through a bitter divorce and one day he just picked up the girl from school and vanished. The Met scoured all of London and came up with nothing, so this woman went to Crowley and begged for help. Promised him anything he wanted if he’d get her little girl back safe.”

“And?”

“And, Crowley found the girl unharmed and returned her to her mother within twenty-four hours. Told her not to bother with payment, because he’d gotten the price he was owed from her ex. Who, incidentally, has vanished without a trace. When the little girl was asked what happened she said that, and I quote, ‘Daddy promised not to shout at Mummy again because he didn’t like it when Mr Crowley kept looking at him. And then we had ice-cream and came home to Mummy.’”

“I see,” said Dumbledore slowly. “How . . . interesting.”


	13. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, a visit to the bank! But first, lingering effects of trauma!

_The miller’s child hid in the coils of the great, black serpent and so his wicked father could not find him._

_“Why did you not eat me?” the child asked, when his father was gone._

_The great serpent sniffed. “You’re too skinny. You’d be barely more than a mouthful. And you’ve shown me a better meal to catch.”_

_The child left the cave and returned to the village to find his mother well once more. The miller was not seen again._

\- Excerpt from The Snake and the Miller’s Child. Russian Folktale.

* * *

Crowley watched the inferno around him with a detached feeling of horror. He knew this nightmare, knew the heat of the flames, the stink of the smoke. He’d had it many times in the last few months and was now intimately familiar with its various iterations. Sometimes it was just the fire in the bookshop. Other times, it began in the bookshop and then faded until he was standing in heaven watching the single pillar of flame roaring in front of him. With Aziraphale in the middle of it, screaming.

The nightmare hurt. It always did. But Crowley was, if nothing else, someone who had learned how to cope. So he waited, watching the scene his sleeping mind had conjured up. _This isn’t real, _he told himself. _Aziraphale is safe, the bookshop has been restored to its full glory. Heaven and Hell won’t dare to attack again. At least for now. So no need to thrash about in bed and worry Aziraphale. Just wait. This isn’t real. It’ll be over soon. I’ll wake up and Aziraphale will be right there beside me-_

The sudden sound of a child crying out in terror knocked Crowley out of his detachment. All at once the oven-hot flames and the stench of smoke, which has been filtering through a sort of mental glass wall , overwhelmed his senses. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face, clouding his eyes. The acrid smoke filled his nostrils and stung his throat. Through it all, he could hear the cries. Horribly familiar and growing louder and more terrified with every passing second.

_Not real, not real, not real,_ the demon reminded himself desperately, even as he tried to push forward through the flames. _It didn’t happen this way. Harry wasn’t here-_

Then, just as had really happened all those months ago, a jet of water hit Crowley square in the chest, knocking him to the floor. He fell with a thud, jarring his knee against something hard-

And woke up on the edge of the bed, heart hammering wildly and his legs tangled in the bedsheets.

“Bleugh,” said Crowley. A second later, when his attempt to disentangle himself resulted in him overbalancing and slipping onto the floor in an ungraceful heap, he managed a muffled ‘oh shit’.

A few seconds after that, with much squirming and a few more muffled curses, the Serpent of Eden managed to free himself from his silk bedsheets. He got to his feet and regarded his and Aziraphale’s bedroom with something approaching a functioning brain.

“Right,” he said the empty room. “Angel’s still out then.”

_That explains the nightmare then_, Crowley thought. They were always worse when he slept alone.

It was as he was frowning down at the bedsheets on the floor that he smelled it. A faint but sharp stink, floating through the air. Crowley, whose sense of smell was considerably better than a human’s, identified it immediately. Water, trace amounts of ammonia and human sweat with that undertone that indicated a human experiencing heart-racing terror.

Crowley was through the door and out in the hall in less than a second.

About to fling Harry’s door open, he paused. No wards had been breached and he hadn’t heard anyone trying to break in (and Crowley, despite the common myth that snakes were deaf, had very acute hearing indeed). That suggested a more relaxed entrance might be appropriate. So he knocked carefully, noting that that the smell was very definitely coming from Harry’s room.

“Harry?” he called. “You awake kid?”

The smell of panic increased.

“Harry?” he tried again. “You okay?”

After a long moment, Harry answered in the choked tone of someone trying not to cry. “I’m fine, I just- I’ve . . .” His voice cracked and he trailed off, but Crowley was reasonably sure what the problem was now, so he snapped his fingers. There was a surprised choke from inside the room and the smell vanished.

“That better?” he called through the door.

Harry made a muffled affirmative noise.

“Can I come in?”

There was another affirmative noise, so Crowley eased the door open and stepped in. Harry was sat in the middle his bed, arms wrapped around his knees. The bedside lamp was on and in its steady light, Harry’s red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks were impossible to miss.

“Hey,” said Crowley gently, plopping himself down on the bed next to Harry. “Had an accident?”

Harry nodded miserably. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered, burying his face against his knees.

“Well, yeah, that’s why it’s called an accident.”

Harry only made an incoherent distressed noise in reply, but his shoulders, which had been up around his ears, relaxed slightly.

“Happens to everyone now and then, y’know,” Crowley continued casually. “Normal part of being human. ‘S nothing to worry about, Harry. Easy to clean up. ‘Specially for us.”

Harry raised his face from his knees and gave Crowley an agonised look. “I’ve never done it before! Aunt Petunia would’ve killed me! I just-” he broke off, swallowing convulsively, “I was dreaming and-“

_Ah, _thought Crowley, _there it is. You too, huh?_

“Nightmare?” he suggested sympathetically.

Harry nodded and buried his face against his knees again. His shoulders started to inch back towards his ears.

“You know, that makes a lot of sense.”

The incoherent Harry-noise was more confused than distressed, this time.

“Sure,” Crowley said. “You’re scared, so your body wants you to run away. You can move faster if you’re lighter, so what does your body do? Uses the easiest way to toss any spare weight. Like I said, totally normal.”

Harry didn’t answer, but he did uncurl a little bit, so Crowley decided against his demonic instincts to go for somewhat embarrassing honesty. “Just woke up from a nightmare myself. Everyone gets those too.”

Harry’s head shot up and he stared at Crowley. “You did?”

“Yep. Bad one.”

“Must’ve been,” said Harry. “If it scared you, I mean.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched. “Think I’m not scared of anything, do you?”

“Aren’t you?”

Crowley looked down at the boy, suddenly aware of how very young he was. “Everyone’s got something they’re scared of,” he said.

“Even Aziraphale?” Harry asked in surprise and Crowley almost choked.

“Him too,” he confirmed. “Want to talk about your nightmare? I’m told that helps, sometimes.”

Harry shrugged.

“You don’t have to,” Crowley assured him. “It was just a thought.”

Harry was quiet for a moment. Then he said, slowly at first, but with increasing panic, “I was back in my cupboard. The door was locked. I couldn’t get out. It kept getting smaller and darker. I couldn’t – couldn’t breathe!”

“Hey, hey, no, easy now,” Crowley said, cutting the boy off as he started to hyperventilate. He reached out and started to rub circles on Harry’s back, the boy’s body shuddering under his hand. “You’re not there. You’re safe now. You’re home. I’ve got you. Breathe. Don’t think, just breathe. In and out slowly, that’s it.”

Another few minutes passed, with Crowley murmuring encouragement as Harry got his breathing under control. “There now,” he said when Harry’s breath was slow and even once more. “You’re all right.”

“Sorry,” Harry muttered, not meeting his eyes.

“No,” said Crowley firmly. “No apologising. You’ve nothing to apologise for, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry agreed.

Crowley grinned at him. “That’s my boy. Now, time you went back to sleep. Busy day tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Harry again, but he sounded more doubtful.

“Hey. Don’t worry. Any more bad dreams or accidents, you come and get me, all right? No one’s going to be angry with you. Promise.”

Harry nodded and curled up underneath his blanks. “G’night,” he said quietly.

“Goodnight, Harry.”

Sometime later, after Crowley had completely abandoned his own attempt to get back to sleep, a fizz in the wards let him know that Aziraphale had returned. He looked up expectantly when the angel pushed open their bedroom door. “Well? How did it go?”

Aziraphale smiled, looking extremely pleased with himself. “Oh quite well. After all, I’m the nice one.”

The demon threw back his head and laughed.

* * *

Crowley looked around Diagon Alley and whistled. “Book Girl wasn’t kidding. This place has barely changed. And I thought _you_ didn’t keep up with the times, angel.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Harry stared at the street, barely listening to the exchange above his head. It was packed full of people, all dressed in a way that would have made Aunt Petunia sneer. A few people were wearing more usual clothes, or were dressed a little like Aziraphale, but he’d never seen so many robes and cloaks in his life. Nor so many pointy hats. Most were muted, but Harry also saw teenagers wearing brightly coloured ones with designs that went from beautiful to garish and back again.

He looked up at Aziraphale and Crowley. “All- all of these people,” he said, stumbling over the words. “They’re all like me? All of them?”

“That’s right, Harry” said Aziraphale, smiling at him. “Now, where to first? The bank I think.”

“Really angel?” asked Crowley sceptically. “It’s not like we need it. We could just-“

“No dear.” Aziraphale’s voice was firm. “It’s convenient, but it does have the unfortunate effect of reducing the value of the currency. Anyway,” he added with satisfaction, “I have a vault there. The contents have been gathering dust for a while now and it’s time they did something useful.”

Crowley grunted. “Guess you’re right,” he conceded. “Should look at my own, I suppose.”

“What’s more,” said Aziraphale, as they walked through the bustling street, “we should find out the situation with Harry’s vault, while we’re at it. In theory no one should have had access to it in ten years, but I’d like to make sure.”

At this, Crowley nodded approvingly. “Good point.”

Harry blinked. “My vault?” he asked in amazement. “I don’t have a vault.”

“You most certainly do, Harry,” Aziraphale disagreed. “Everything your parents owned, all their possessions, passed to you. That includes the contents of their vault.”

Harry stared at Aziraphale. “I have money?” he said faintly, feeling as if he were about to keel over.

“Quite a bit, I should think. Ah, here we are!”

Harry looked up at the large building in front of him. Carved into its massive stone façade were the words ‘Gringotts Bank’ in gold lettering. A real wizards bank, Harry thought, fascinated. He wondered what kinds of magical treasures were inside it.

“Still run by the goblins, isn’t it?” Crowley said conversationally to Aziraphale.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Um,” said Harry, unsure that he’d heard correctly. “Goblins?”

“Non-human species, powerful magic, strong affinity for gold,” Crowley explained in his quick way. “Couple of books about them back at the shop if you’re interested in knowing more, aren’t there angel?”

“Yes indeed,” said Aziraphale. Then he frowned. “I’d better make sure you get the corrected versions I put together. The originals, though quite old and valuable had some ridiculous inaccuracies.” He pushed the front door of the bank open and Crowley and Harry followed him inside.

The space inside was a vast marbled hall, full of the particular noise made by a crowd of people trying to talk quietly in a space with very good acoustics. And crossing back and forth through it, looking very busy were-

“Oh,” whispered Harry. “Goblins.”

There they were, just going about their business. Real, living, goblins. Not like on a tv-show where it was just a short human in make-up. A completely different species, right in front of him.

“Don’t stare, Harry. It’s not polite.”

Harry flushed to the roots of his hair. Aziraphale was right, he realised. He had been staring. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Aziraphale told him softly. “I don’t think anyone noticed. But do keep in mind that they’re people. Humans are inclined to forget that. And no one likes to be stared at.”

Harry nodded. “I won’t do it again,” he promised.

“That’s my boy.”

Harry flushed again, this time from embarrassed happiness. Crowley had said that last night and it had made him happy them too. Made him feel like he belonged, like he was- wanted. He followed the two adults across the spotless marble hallway, listening with half an ear as Crowley muttered about how he ‘didn’t do queues’ and Aziraphale promised to make it up to him later if he did not skip just this one please. Eventually Crowley reluctantly gave in and the three of them joined the queue to a desk at which a smartly dressed goblin was sat.

Once they reached the head of the queue, the goblin glanced up from the documents on his desk. “Name?” he said disinterestedly.

“Anthony J Crowley,” Crowley drawled. “Mr Fell and I are here to make a withdrawal. And our Harry would like a look in his vault.”

The goblin’s glance became a great deal sharper and he leaned forward over his high desk. His eyebrows rose considerably when he got a better look at Harry. “Mr. Potter,” he said. “A pleasure to meet you at last.”

“Hello,” said Harry politely, trying desperately not to stare again. It was quite hard.

The goblin leaned back and made a gesture to another goblin at a nearby desk. “An Identify is required,” he said to the second goblin, who appeared considerably younger. Or at least Harry guessed he was based on the lack of wrinkles compared to the desk goblin. “Fetch Mr. Anthony J Crowley’s and Mr . . ?”

“A. Z,” said Aziraphale helpfully.

“Mr A. Z. Fell’s records,” the desk goblin finished.

The younger goblin saluted smartly and hurried off. Within minutes, he was back with two extremely old, extremely thick books, which he handed to the goblin at the desk with a bow.

The goblin at the desk opened the books and thumbed through them. As he flicked the pages back and forth, Harry noticed his face becoming paler and paler, until finally he could have done a convincing impression of a lump of ice. “Mr. Crowley. Mr. Fell,” the goblin croaked. Your identity is confirmed. And may I say how honoured we are to have the pleasure of your custom once more. It has been . . . some time.”

“Feels like decades,” said Crowley.

“Oh yes,” smiled Aziraphale, a twinkle in his eye. “Centuries even. Now if we could get on with things, Mr . . .”

“Griphook,” the goblin supplied faintly.

“Mr Griphook,” said Aziraphale politely. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.” And he smiled again.


	14. The Vaults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was intended to be the diagon alley chapter but these three feckers just would not get out of the bank. I present to you: Harry Potter and the Financial Institution. Or :Crowley's Door Lock Criticises His Parenting Skills.

_The origin and causes of the accursed Parseltongue ability are unknown. It is mercifully rare and when it presents is almost invariably associated with dark wizards, traitors and the lesser members of humanity . –_ On the Curse of the Serpent. Bramwell Myerscough. British Wizarding Press. 1912.

* * *

Griphook, the colour gradually returning to his face, returned Aziraphale’s gaze with only slight reluctance. “I assume you all have your keys?” he asked with a sniff.

“Of course!” Aziraphale replied. He reached into his pocket and, with a little flourish, produced a shining golden key. Harry was unsurprised to see that it had, like many of Aziraphale’s ornaments back at the bookshop, a little pair of decorative wings on one end. Aziraphale then polished the key with a handkerchief and handed it to the waiting goblin.

Crowley did not produce a key from his pocket. Instead he clicked his fingers and in front of Harry’s fascinated eyes, pulled a silver key topped with a snake’s head out of thin air. Griphook flinched slightly at this, but took the key all the same.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Griphook, attaching the two keys to a large ring on his belt. “And Mr Potter’s key?”

Harry’s stomach started to sink, nausea clawing its way up his throat with remarkable speed. He didn’t have a gold key. He’d never had a gold _anything_. Even if he was supposed to have a key to his parents vault, he had no idea where it was. What if Aunt Petunia had it? How would he get hold of it? And he needed it _now, _Griphook was looking at him expectantly and-

“Oh yes. Here it is,” said Aziraphale calmly, interrupting Harry’s spiral of panic. He reached into a pocket and produced another golden key. “There you are,” he said, handing it to Griphook. “I trust everything is in order?”

Harry watched as Griphook handled the key carefully, producing a jewellers eyeglass to examine it closely. Once he was finished, he shot a look at Aziraphale, encountered only an expression of bland pleasantness in return and then frowned down at the key, turning it over in his hands. “It seems so,” the goblin conceded. “Very good then,” he continued, with a curt little hand gesture. “Follow me please.”

Harry’s nausea, which had subsided when Aziraphale produced the key to his parents’ vault, soon returned when he found himself seated between Crowley and Aziraphale on a speeding mine cart rushing through the bowels of Gringotts. His only consolation was the fact that Aziraphale didn’t seem to be enjoying the ride either.

Crowley, on the other hand, was grinning in delight, his red hair streaming behind him as the cart rumbled through the tunnels, swerving alarmingly at each turn.

“Whoo-ee!” he said happily, when the cart finally stopped. “That’s one way to travel!”

“Quite,” said Aziraphale, who looked as bad as Harry felt. “Reminds me of that time we went to America.”

“Oh yes,” Crowley agreed as he bounced out of the mine cart, Aziraphale and Harry half-staggering behind him. “That _was_ a fun time.”

“Only for you, Crowley.”

“Oh come on, angel, it wasn’t that bad.”

“Ahem,” coughed Griphook, recalling their attention as he stepped nimbly off the cart. “Vault 687. Access may be granted only to Mr. Potter or his designated guardians while he remains under-age. I must ask you to confirm that you are, in fact, Mr. Potter’s designated guardians.” The goblin produced a piece of parchment covered in ornate writing, which he brandished almost protectively in front of him. “Clients are reminded that attempting to lie on a binding document will result in the immediate, irreversible destruction of said document and immediate exp-“

But Crowley had already begun to draw a complicated pattern on the parchment with his finger. For a moment the pattern glowed brightly and when it faded, Harry could see a curling black snake just like the tattoo that Crowley had next to his ear.

“My turn,” said Aziraphale as he finished straightening his bow-tie, which had been knocked somewhat askew by the ride down the tunnel. He took the parchment from Griphook and carefully drew a pattern of his own. Once again, the parchment glowed. This time when it faded, there was a small illustration of a sword, wreathed in flames with a stylized eye in the pommel. Aziraphale nodded at it in satisfaction and then handed the document back to Griphook.

The banker turned the parchment over slowly, examining the ‘signatures’ with his eyeglass. He swallowed. “Thank you gentlemen. A moment, if you please.”

Griphook approached the vault door, clicking the key delicately into the lock and a few minutes later Harry was looking at more money than he’d ever seen in his life. Piles of bright gold, shining in the torchlight. A fortune in precious metal hidden under London, and it was all _his._

_You ungrateful good-for-nothing! We took you in out of the goodness of our hearts, feed you, clothe you, put a roof over your head and you have the nerve to disrespect me. Get back in there and shut the door behind you! And while you’re there think about this: Your parents got themselves killed by their own carelessness and left you nothing. Without us you would be starving on the streets!_

As Vernon Dursley’s angry words echoed in his head Harry suddenly found that it was extremely hard to breathe. His vision swam, the realisation like an iron band pressing around his lungs. All this time, it had just been another lie, like the one about the car crash. His mum and dad hadn’t been drunk and dangerous to innocent people and they hadn’t left him with nothing. Everything Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had said, everything Dudley has repeated, it was all wrong. Had they ever told him _anything_ that was true?

“Harry,” said a voice softly by his ear, distracting from the suddenly swimming piles of gold. “Harry, my dear, breathe.”

Harry attempted to speak but only managed a garbled cough. He tried again, managed another cough and then felt a large solid hand start rubbing his back. The iron band around his lungs loosened and he inhaled gratefully.

“That’s it,” said Aziraphale’s voice gently, “That’s right. In and out, there’s a good lad.”

As Harry slowly began to breath normally again he caught Griphook’s eye for a moment. The goblin’s eyes were wide, his bushy eyebrows raised, and his gaze flickered from Aziraphale to Harry to Crowley and then back again. Harry flushed to the roots of his hair and looked at the floor, wishing that he could just hide behind Aziraphale. He’d never had trouble with his breathing before and now it had happened twice in the last two days.

“Right,” said Crowley, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. He turned to Griphook, who took an involuntary step back. “You’ve got an inventory list?”

Griphook’s look of shocked surprise faded, replaced by one of professional disdain. “Of course,” he said curtly, unclipping a thick cylinder from his belt. He opened the cylinder, carefully withdrew a scroll bound with a crimson cord and handed it to Crowley, who immediately handed it to Aziraphale.

“You’ve got more practice at inventorying than me,” he pointed out when Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

Aziraphale sighed, but did not reply. Instead he unrolled the scroll and after taking a single quick glance down the length of it, he strolled into the vault and began to match its contents to the catalogue.

Harry, Crowley and Griphook waited for several minutes while Aziraphale stopped at various nooks and crannies in the cave-like vault, murmuring things like ‘there should be two of- aha, there it is’, and ‘mmm five hundred and seventeen, that’s right’. Eventually Aziraphale finished, exited the vault and handed the inventory scroll back to Griphook.

“All present and correct,” he announced cheerfully. “Not that the staff of Gringotts would stand for anything less!”

To Harry’s relief, the goblin, who had been looking somewhat offended during Aziraphale’s inventory, relaxed slightly as he returned the scroll to its case. “Indeed we would not,” he agreed, a little mollified. “Now, is a withdrawal to be made or shall we move on?”

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged a glance. “A small withdrawal yes,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley nodded in agreement. Aziraphale clicked his fingers, producing a small leather satchel from thin air and a strangled noise from Griphook’ throat. Then he reached into the vault, collected a handful of golden, silver, and bronze coins and deposited them in the satchel which he then held out to Harry.

Harry took it carefully, slightly dizzy with the knowledge that he was right at this moment holding more money than he’d ever had in his life.

“Right,” said Crowley, gleefully eyeing the minecart again. “On to the next one!”

Aziraphale sighed.

Harry obediently clambered back into the cart, holding tightly to the precious satchel and a minute later, Griphook pulled a lever, once again sending them hurtling through the tunnels.

The second part of their trip under Gringotts was much longer than the first and Harry could feel the change in the air as the cart brought them deeper and deeper underground. Finally, after what was probably about thirty minutes, but had felt like hours, Griphook hit the break once again and the cart gradually slowed to a stop. Harry looked around, but couldn’t see any vaults. They appeared to have stopped in a dead end. Before he could ask Griphook if he’d taken a wrong turn, there was the clunk of metal interlocking and the cart began to slowly descend in a straight line. 

The lift, for that was what it was, took what seemed like an eternity to reach its destination and the noise of it made it impossible to talk without yelling, so Harry stayed quiet, holding tightly to his bag and the cart safety bar. Eventually the downward motion stopped and there was another clunk. Griphook pulled another lever and off they rattled again through more twists and turns before finally coming to a stop. Wary of another lift, Harry remained still and only when Aziraphale and Crowley started to move did he reluctantly release his white-knuckled grip on the safety bar.

This time, when they all scrambled out of the cart, Harry found himself looking around a cavern. Unlike the tunnel where his vault door had been slotted into an entire row of identical doors, there were only two doors here and they were both twice the size of every other vault door Harry had seen. Neither did they have golden numbers carved into them. Instead, the vault on the left had a large twining snake set into it with two glittering yellow jewels where the eyes should be. The vault on the right had the same sword wreathed in fire that Aziraphale had etched onto the parchment earlier. However, in addition to being wreathed in flames, the sword was also surrounded by a multitude of carvings that Harry took a moment to realise were eyes of various different sizes. All of them with centres of sapphire blue.

Neither door had anything remotely resembling a keyhole.

“Wow,” whispered Harry quietly, but in the cavernous space, it echoed loudly anyway.

Crowley grinned at him. “Pretty good, right?”

Griphook cleared his throat and Harry dragged his gaze away from the massive door and back to the goblin, who seemed pale again in the flickering light provided by a couple of slow burning torches. “If one of you gentlemen would like to go first?” he asked.

Harry’s guardians looked at each other. Crowley smiled in the way that Harry had noticed was reserved only for Aziraphale. It was soft and gentle and seeing it made Harry happy for reasons he was not quite sure of. He liked to think that his parents had smiled at each other like that.

(Harry had yet to notice that Crowley had a very similar smile that was reserved for him.)

“Go ahead, angel. You first.”

Aziraphale smiled back, just as softly and then turned to face the door on the right. He reached up and placed his hand over the hilt of the sword. For a moment the entire carving glowed, illuminating the entire cavern, the glittering blue jewels in the eyes reflecting light into the darkest shadows and causing everyone except Aziraphale to cover their eyes. Then there was a grating sound like two pieces of rock being scraped together and when Harry’s vision cleared Aziraphale’s door had somehow acquired a keyhole.

“Mr. Griphook?” Aziraphale asked politely. “If you would, please?”

Griphook, who was once again doing his impression of a block of ice, stepped forward and pushed the little winged key into the new keyhole. It turned easily and the massive door slowly started to swing open. Griphook stepped back and pulled a torch from the wall. In its flickering light Harry saw a vast space, of which perhaps a quarter was filled with chests full of coins, suits of armour, a collection of various mirror bright swords and shields and on one wall what looked like a portrait of Crowley dressed in robes, standing underneath the branches of an apple tree, with much longer, curlier hair and two shining black wings emerging from his back.

The remaining three quarters of the vault was filled with overstuffed bookshelves.

The four of them regarded the vault for a moment.

“Honestly, I don’t know what else I expected,” Crowley said eventually. Then he shot an appraising look at the portrait. “Actually no, I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting _that_. Wherever did you get it, angel?”

Harry shot him a questioning look and Crowley shrugged. “First time I’ve actually seen inside this vault,” he explained. “And I know I didn’t sit for that portrait so . . .” He trailed off looking at Aziraphale expectantly.

Aziraphale sighed in a very put-upon sort of way. “If you must know,” he said testily, “I over-indulged a little one night with your artist friend back in Italy and, well, the point is, he was somewhat inspired by my ramblings and insisted on painting that for me. Happy?”

Crowley looked puzzled for a moment before enlightenment dawned. “Artist- Not _Leo_? _He_ insisted on painting _that_ for you? I thought you disliked him.”

“Yes, Leo. And I didn’t dislike him, I merely preferred other company to his. The man had a grating voice. Now will you drop it?”

“Alright,” said Crowley, an odd expression on his face, as if he had figured out something and didn’t know whether to be angry or start laughing.

Aziraphale produced another satchel from nowhere, this time garnering no reaction from Griphook who seemed to have decided that he’d run through his day’s allotment of surprise. This new satchel had a considerably greater amount of coins thrust into it and then Aziraphale stepped back out of the vault.

“Right,” he said to Crowley once Griphook had shut the vault door and the keyhole had vanished. “Your turn.”

Unlike Aziraphale, Crowley did not put his hand on the carving of his door. Instead he took off his sunglasses, exposing his serpentine eyes and hissed at the carved snake.

_“Alright, you great lump of rock. I’m back. Now wake up!”_

For a moment nothing happened. Then the carving’s eyes began to glow and with a loud sharp crack, the snake’s head pushed out of the door. Harry swallowed as the great yellow crystals regarded him. Of all the things he had expected when he’d got up this morning a living stone snake hadn’t been on the list.

The fact that Griphook had also flinched violently when the snake came away from the door hadn’t helped.

Then the snake spoke, ‘_Thiss one iss new,’ _she said, her voice a sort of feminine hissing drawl. ‘_Iss not Masster or Massterss’ Beloved or one of the Small Guards. Who isss thiss little human, Masster?’_

Crowley glared at the stone snake, apparently unperturbed by it. “_He’s our boy. Now get off the bloody door. You’re blocking the keyhole!”_

The stone snake went still and then her tongue flickered toward Harry, scenting the air. _‘Master and Beloved have a hatchling?!’, _ she exclaimed.

_“Yes,” _replied Crowley. _”And he can understand you so be polite or else!”_

_‘Hatchling has sserpent’s tongue?’, _the stone snake asked in a delighted tone._ ‘What a good sssnakelet. Very good, yesss.’_

Her great stone tongue flickered before Harry again and though her expression did not change, Harry heard disapproval in the great stone snake’s voice. ‘_Iss very ssmall. Masster not feeding ssnakelet? Snakeletss need food to grow, Masster. ‘_

_“Of course I’m bloody feeding him. He’s human. These thingss take time.”_

The stone snake tilted her head in a considering manner. Then she stretched out until her head was next to Harry’s and whispered_ ‘assk Masster’s Beloved little hatchling. Beloved is besst food finder. Little Ssnakelet will grow big and sstrong, yesss.’_

_“Alright!” _hissed Crowley at the end of his patience_. “Now will you sshut it and get off the bloody door.”_

_‘Very well, Masster,’_ said the stone snake, in the tone of one good-humouredly indulging an angry toddler. There was another loud crack of stone and then with a sound rather like a grindstone, the enormous stone snake slithered onto the floor and over to Aziraphale. ‘_Hello Beloved. Ssnakelet, tell Massters Beloved greetings for me?”_

Aziraphale gave her a puzzled look.

“She says hello,” Harry translated. “She likes you.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. He smiled down at the snake. “Hello dear. What a beautiful creature you are.”

Harry was aware that snakes cannot actually preen, that being a thing that birds do, but he didn’t really know what else to call the stone snake’s reaction to Aziraphale’s words. She coiled around his legs, her jeweled eyes sparkling._ ‘Many thanks. Beloved is very beautiful too. Masster has ssaid sso many times.’_

Harry translated this and was fascinated when Aziraphale almost seemed to physically glow in response.

“Bloody mortal magic,” muttered a red-faced Crowley in the background while Griphook fumbled with the vault key and the door swung open. “Bloody mortal magic turning my bloody vault ward bloody semi-sentient.” He stalked into the vault, a tasteful black leather satchel with a snake motif over his shoulder, while Harry and Aziraphale continued admiring the stone snake. There was the sound of coins being scattered and muffled complaining about ‘_jumped up door lock thinks I don’t know childcare’ _and then Crowley emerged and slammed the door shut.

_“You!” _he hissed at the stone snake. _“Back on the door. Now!”_

_‘Ass the Masster commandsss,’_ the stone snake replied, making no effort to hide the amusement in her voice. ‘_Goodbye Snakelet, Beloved_,’

“Bye,” said Harry, waving at her as she sank back into the vault door with a contented hiss.

“What a darling creature,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley glared at him.


	15. Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang goes shopping, Harry's abandonment issues rear their head , the wizarding world exposes it's bad side and Crowley loses his temper just a bit.

_-the violent death of the young Indian housemaid who had been found floating in the river a week prior was rather ignored by the police and the case quickly went cold. At the time it was widely believed by the local Indian population that someone in the Myerscough household was responsible and that the English family was shielding the culprit._

_If there is any truth to this belief, however, it is unlikely ever to come to light, given the sudden and terrible loss of the head of the family and his heir, who, on travelling from the Myerscough house in Delhi to visit a friend in Mumbai (then called Bombay) a month after the housemaid’s murder, both tragically suffered deadly snake bites, dying within minutes of each other. The remaining family returned to London soon after. The general feeling among the locals who live near old Myerscough House , and who do not set much store by fine British customs such as 'Innocent until proven guilty' is that they came by their just desserts_. – Britain in India. John Turner. BBC Books. 1962.

* * *

The ride back to the surface was just as rattling and hair-raising as it had been on the way down and when they finally exited the mine-cart back on street level, Harry was glad that he’d managed the whole trip without being sick. Still clutching the precious bag of coins, he clambered out of the cart for the last time and heaved an immense sigh of relief.

Griphook, who was still rather pale, led the way back to his desk in the main hall and produced several parchment forms which he politely requested they all sign. Crowley and Aziraphale reproduced their unusual signatures, while Harry, after several tries with the quill he’d been handed, managed something that wasn’t simply an illegible smear. That done, Griphook thanked the trio for their custom and bid them an extremely polite yet firm goodbye.

“Alright,” said Crowley. “What’s next on the list, angel?”

Aziraphale hummed thoughtfully. “Books, uniform, and then wand I think.”

“Books first, there’s a surprise,” laughed Crowley. He took Aziraphale’s hand and slung his other arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Alright, let’s go then.”

As the they made their way towards the large front door, Harry shivered suddenly despite the warmth of Crowley’s arm. He thought he might be imagining it, but he felt like the other customers in the bank were giving the three of them odd looks. He even felt as though people were staring at him specifically and for a second he could have sworn someone whispered his name. Harry shuddered again and Crowley squeezed his shoulder. When Harry looked up at him, Crowley’s expression was odd. His teeth were visible, but it looked nothing like his habitual grin. Harry looked at Aziraphale and found that he too did not quite have his usual expression.

Harry swallowed and took an interest in the marble floor. _It’s not me_, he told himself as he kept his gaze resolutely downward. _Something else is bothering them, not me. I’m not the problem._

_Are you sure? _said a nasty little voice in his head that sounded like his Aunt Petunia. _After all, you cause problems all the time. Remember last night?_

_Shut up, _Harry thought miserably, _It was an accident. _

_It was disgusting, _said Aunt Petunia’s voice. _Just like you. Always causing a mess, always getting filth everywhere. Sooner or later they’re going to realise you’re more trouble than you’re worth. And then-_

_No they won’t! _Harry told the voice desperately. _I can be good. I can! I won’t cause anymore problems. They’ll- _

_They’ll what? _his thoughts mocked, sounding more and more like Aunt Petunia._ Love you? Don’t be so stupid._

Harry’s thoughts were interrupted when he collided with a large solid object in the bank doorway. “Oof,” he coughed, the air knocked out of him..

“Oh!” said a man’s voice. “Sorry about tha’. Are yeh alright son?”

Harry looked up. And up, and up. The largest, hairiest man he had ever seen was looking down at him in concern.

“I’m fine,” said Harry quickly. “Sorry.” He gave the man an apologetic look.

“No harm done,” the man assured him cheerfully. Then his eyes widened. “Harry? Is tha’ you?”

“Um,” said Harry, slightly alarmed at the intensity of the man’s voice. He felt Crowley’s hand tighten on his shoulder. “Yes?”

Before the big man could reply, Aziraphale spoke and the cold in his voice made Harry’s insides freeze. “And you are?”

“Rubeus Hagrid,” the man announced with a big smile, apparently impervious to Aziraphale’s freezing stare. “Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts. Yeh must be Mister Fell. Professor Dumbledore told me how you and yer partner ‘ave been looking after Harry. Can’t thank yeh enough, sir.” He looked down at Harry again. “Bless! I haven’t seen yeh since yeh were a tiny thing. Just like yer dad, you are. Oh, but yeh’ve got yer Mum’s eyes!”

Harry smiled awkwardly at the big man. “Thanks?” he said.

Rubeus Hagrid beamed at him.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Crowley drawled, his voice much more unfriendly than usual. “We’ve got things to do.”

Once again, Hagrid seemed impervious to the coldness aimed at him. “Of course, of course,” he said. “Gettin’ all Harry’s school things, no doubt.”

“Exactly,” said Aziraphale, who now seemed to have softened somewhat in the face of Hagrid’s relentless cheerfulness. “A lot of things still on the list. Busy day, you know how it is.”

“Of course,” said Hagrid again. “Got some things to take care of meself, before school starts.” He beamed at Harry again. “I’ll see yeh in September then, Harry. Goodbye fer now.” With that, he strode off into the bank.

Harry watched him go with mixed feelings. Someone – besides Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon – who had actually known his parents. Someone who would be at the school.

“Come on Harry,” said Crowley, squeezing his shoulder again. “Time to get going.”

* * *

Their first stop after leaving the bank was a bookshop named Flourish and Blotts and for a while Harry thought it might be their last stop as well.

“Angel,” Crowley half-pleaded almost an hour later, trying to pull Aziraphale out of the middle of several stacks of books, “we’ve got all of Harry’s books, and we’ve still got a uniform and a wand to pick up.”

“Oh, all right,” said Aziraphale. He gave the stacks a wistful look. “Fascinating collection here. You know, I’ve really been neglecting my collection of magical tomes in favour of the more mundane. Why did I do that?”

“Because you picked up one that started eating your other books, remember?” Crowley reminded him.

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said sheepishly. “That’s right.” 

From Flourish and Blotts, they moved on to Potage’s cauldron shop, acquiring a pewter cauldron and a nice set of scales, both of which disappeared into Crowley’s stylish black bag without making so much a bulge. The books from Flourish and Blotts had done the same earlier.

“Bigger on the inside,” Crowley explained proudly when Harry hesitantly asked. “Got the idea from a tv show. Amazing, the things humans come up with.”

After that, they moved on to Madam Malkin’s to get Harry’s uniform. A squat little witch in mauve welcomed them in and almost immediately got into deep conversation with Aziraphale about different cloths and textiles, while Harry found himself standing on a stool while a shop assistant worked around him. Crowley excused himself, citing some personal business that he had to take care of and promised to meet them at the ice-crem shop down the street when they were ready to head in search of a wand.

This left Harry aimlessly staring out the window, watching Crowley head down the street, his all-black clothes and flaming red hair making him stick out like a single orange in a bag of limes.

“Hello,” said a bored, drawling voice beside Harry. It was a blond boy of about Harry’s age, who also had a seamstress working around him while he stood on a stool. “You Hogwarts too?”

“Yes,” Harry replied.

My father's in Flourish and Blotts buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

For some reason Harry found himself thinking of Dudley.

"Have you got your own broom?" the boy went on.

"No," said Harry. They had passed the flying broom shop earlier on the way here and he’d been fascinated by the idea, but he hadn’t even considered asking Aziraphale or Crowley about it. He suspected that they would (rightly) point out that a overstuffed bookshop in the middle of London wasn’t the best place for a flying broom.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be. He supposed he’d have to ask Aziraphale and Crowley.

"I do. Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?"

"No," said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.

"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been -- imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

"Mmm," said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting. He wondered what was so bad about Hufflepuff.

“I say,” said the boy, as a loud laugh floated across the shop, “I wonder who that is. There’s something odd about him.”

Harry glanced in the direction of the sound and he felt cold. It was Aziraphale, chatting happily with Madam Malkin and practically glowing with pleasure. “I think he’s brilliant,” he told the blond boy flatly.

“Oh?” said the boy. “Is he with you? Why? He’s obviously not your father.”

Harry felt his stomach clench. “My parents are dead.”

“Oh.” The boy was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.” Then he cocked his head at Harry consideringly. “They were our sort of people, weren’t they?”

Harry tried to not to flinch.

** _Our_ ** _ sort of people. He’s **obviously** not your father._

He’d heard words like that before. Well, overheard them anyway. Muttered behind his back. Sometimes said openly to his face, accompanied by the words ‘why don’t you go back where you came from?’ Sitting in his cupboard, listening to Aunt Petunia talk to her friends, assuring them that ‘the little thug’ wasn’t around.

“They were a witch and a wizard, if that’s what you mean.”

“I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families.”

Harry was beginning to feel very, very sick. He wished the blond boy would stop talking to him.

Fortunately, before the boy could say anything else, the seamstress fitting Harry’s uniform finished up. “Down you get, dear,” she said kindly.

Glad to escape, Harry nodded goodbye to the blond boy and half-ran over to where Aziraphale was still talking animatedly to Madam Malkin. “I’m done!” he announced, wincing as his voice came out slightly louder than he’d intended.

But Aziraphale only smiled at him. “Excellent. We can head off and catch up with Crowley just as soon as I pay this accomplished lady.”

Madam Malkin blushed. “Mr. Fell, you are a flatterer.”

“Nonsense! It’s a pleasure to talk to someone who really knows their craft.”

Madam Malkin took the handful of silver coins Aziraphale held out to her and blushed harder. “Well, I must say, it’s a pleasure to talk to a gentleman who appreciates the work that goes into making a proper set of robes.”

Harry was very quiet as they left the shop. The blond boy’s words felt like they were sitting in his own mouth and making the air around him taste foul. Aziraphale eyed him in concern for a moment and asked if everything was alright. Harry shrugged in response. He didn’t know exactly how to explain to Aziraphale why the blond boy’s words had bothered him so much. He’d heard much worse from Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon when they were angry about something, after all.

Things improved slightly when they met Crowley at the ice-cream parlour. Whatever Crowley had been up to, it had left him slightly irritated, but mostly pleased, and he paid for an extra scoop of ice-cream for Aziraphale and Harry. As they sat at the table and ate their ice-creams, while Crowley watched them with a soft smile lingering about his mouth, Harry relaxed and concentrated on enjoying his extra scoop. The blond boy wouldn’t ruin his day for him. Things could only get better.

* * *

Half an hour later, standing in Ollivander’s wand shop, hearing the owner say great things were expected of him, he realised he’d been wrong.

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible, yes, but great.”

_This is it_, thought Harry as the nausea rose in his gullet and he stared at Ollivander, almost unable to believe that the man had actually said what he’d said out loud. _I am actually going to vomit today. Right here in this shop._

“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale firmly, and the sick feeling that had started in Harry’s stomach was forestalled by the clasp of Aziraphale’s hand around his shoulder. “Voldemort and his followers were nothing more than common criminals. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Mr. Ollivander looked mildly taken aback.

“He killed my mum and dad,” Harry said shakily. He inhaled, drawing comfort from the feeling of Aziraphale’s gentle grip. “And then he tried to kill me. Do you think people who kill babies are great?”

Ollivander’s expression was now that of someone who was only just this second realising the full implications of his statement. He looked like a man who was sincerely wishing that his floor would suddenly open up and consuming him whole. Or that he could have a do-over of the last five minutes. Or at least that Crowley would stop glowering at him. “Mr Potter,” he said weakly. “I did not think. I humbly apologise. And my- my condolences. On your loss.”

“It’s alright,” said Harry, though it wasn’t really. But he didn’t know what else to say.

“Angel,” said Crowley in a flat voice, “why don’t you and Harry head off. I’ll pay Mr. Ollivander.”

* * *

As soon as Crowley was sure the door to the shop was safely shut, he dug in his bag, pulled out the price of Harry’s new wand and laid it on the counter. Ollivander, who had begun to tense, relaxed slightly when it appeared that his angry customer was just going to pay him and leave. He reached toward the coins - and froze when he touched them, unable to move a muscle.

“Missster Ollivander,” Crowley hissed, stepping into the man’s space. “I want a word with you.”

“Please!” Ollivander protested. “There’s no need for this! I apologised! I didn’t think-“

“No,” agreed Crowley. “You didn’t, did you? Because you’re sso proud of your wandss aren’t you? Wanted sso much to brag about them that you didn’t think for a ssecond before sspewing your opinionss on Voldemort at _my boy_. Do you have any _idea_ how much Harry ssuffered because of that pathetic fascist?”

“Please! Please,” Ollivander whimpered, trying to desperately to move and reach his wand, which had unaccountably moved out of his grasp. “I’m sorry! Really, I swear!”

“You’d better be,” Crowley hissed, an ancient echo in his words. “Because if I ever, _ever_ hear that you’ve been praising that piece of sshit in any way, I will come back here and ssnap every ssingle wand in thiss sshop. Or maybe I’ll just go with my old favourite when it comes to fascists who upset the people I love and drop a bomb on it. Isss that clear?”

“Yes! Yes! Please!”

Crowley stepped back. “Good,” he said pleasantly as Ollivander doubled over and gasped, finally able to move again. “I’m so glad we had this little talk.”


	16. Nightmares II

_'Ware the pale haired trickster,_

_A man most foul and fell,_

_'Ware his pale blue eyes,_

_Full of sweetest _ _lies,_

_And secrets he’ll ne’er tell._

\- Old Scottish Nursery Rhyme. Dated to early 1600s.

* * *

The days after Harry’s first trip to Diagon Alley passed peacefully enough. In another life, Harry would have had to read his schoolbooks under the covers and with a torch, listening tensely for any noise that indicated his aunt and uncle were about to slam open his door and start screaming at him. In this one he spent hours every day laying on a sofa, his fascinating new schoolbooks propped up on his knees, with Aziraphale ensconced in a chair opposite, eyeing Harry with quiet approval over the top of his own book.

There were also more trips to Tadfield where the Them and Dog accepted Harry as an honorary member of the group. While Aziraphale and Crowley discussed certain magical issues with the local witch, Harry explored Tadfield woods with Adam and his friends. Adam gave him bike-riding lessons, he got covered in mud with Brian, talked about astronomy with Wensleydale (who soon envied Harry his demon-made star-ceiling) and learned Feminism for Beginners from Pepper.

The nights did not pass as peacefully.

Harry’s nightmares, which had been vague and full of unspecified darkness, became much more varied. Often they featured a cruel laugh and flash of sickly green, and when they didn’t, the cramped airless cupboard under the stairs returned, with Harry dreaming himself brought back to the Dursleys by legions of bearded old wizards who insisted it was for his own good. Sometimes, Harry would find himself standing in front of a large medieval castle as the blond boy from Diagon Alley asked him what he was doing there, because wasn’t it obvious that he didn’t belong?

It was the nightmares featuring Aziraphale and Crowley that Harry dreaded most. Their faces glared down at him, angry and frustrated at another mess, another accident, another problem caused solely by the existence in their lives of Harry Potter.

The inevitable rejection that followed would have come almost as relief, except for the fact that this was usually the point where he woke up, drenched with sweat, to discover that he’d once again ruined his bedsheets.

It didn’t matter how many times Aziraphale or Crowley assured him that it was a perfectly normal human reaction to stress. For Harry there was nothing quite as specifically humiliating as that moment when he woke, heart pounding and breath coming in painful gasps, to the awful itchy wet feeling and the knowledge that he’d have to once more drag himself across the hall to knock on the door of his guardians’ bedroom and pray that they wouldn’t be angry.

They never were.

Harry didn’t really know what to do with that.

* * *

It hadn’t escaped Crowley and Aziraphale’s attention that Harry’s nightmares seemed to be getting worse as the month wore on. By the middle of August, they were extremely concerned. However, any attempt to get Harry to communicate what was bothering him was met with assurances that he was perfectly fine, no really, honest. Even Aziraphale’s unconscious ability to have the most close-mouthed stranger confide in him failed to get anything more out of Harry than a shrug and a ‘didn’t sleep great, that’s all!’

“S getting all bottled up still,” Crowley said, one evening as they sat drinking in the back room of the bookshop. It was late, Harry had gone to bed hours ago, and Crowley and Aziraphale were discovering one of the secret joys of new parents i.e. getting absolutely plastered once the kids were asleep. They were currently half-way through the third bottle. “Only ‘s coming out in the nightmares and the” - Crowley waved a vague hand in the air – “the accidents. Got to get him to, to talk about it. Or write. Draw. Something. Got to let it out safely.”

“Diary,” said Aziraphale with the reflective glassiness of the extremely drunk academic. “Diaries ‘re good. Samuel Pepys wrote a diariary. Got a copy. Got two copies.”

“Pepys wassa- whassa word?”

“MP?” suggested Aziraphale.

“No. Other word? Bad. Y’tole me not to say it in fronta Har- in front of Harrr-”

“Tory?”

Crowley’s brow wrinkled with the effort of thought. “No. Not that bad. No, starts with a double-you.”

“Oh! Wanker!” said Aziraphale, beaming triumphantly.

“Thass right! Wanker! Still owes me three pounds. Guineas? Sovereigns? What wassa currency then?”

“Galleons?”

“Nooo. That’s wizards.” Crowley considered a moment. “Blast all wizards!” he decided. “ ‘xcept for Harry. Wait. Where is Harry?”

“Bed,” Aziraphale reminded him. “Too young for wine.”

Crowley looked at his own glass morosely. “Right, yeah. No wine f’r eleven yr olds.” He swallowed a mouthful of wine and pulled a face. “Any-anyway,” he declared, “gotta do something ‘bout it.”

“’Bout what?” Aziraphale’s relationship to his chair, initially on upright lines, was now very definitely leaning towards horizontal.

“Harry! Gotta help him. Stop . . . nightmaring.”

Aziraphale scowled at nothing in particular. It irked him that he couldn’t just banish Harry’s nightmares with a snap of his fingers. Well, as a matter of fact he could, and for a while he had. That was rather the problem. Harry’s nightmares were the result of years of stress and abuse. As such, they had staying power. Aziraphale could only banish them as they happened. Which meant a choice between leaving the nightmares alone or aiming repeated miracles at Harry’s mind. Unfortunately, it was also a fact that repeated exposure to divine power tended to have less than pleasant side-effects. Especially when the human being exposed wasn’t yet old enough to shave.

“’ll be hard,” he said mournfully, trying to focus. “Ten year inna cupboard. Gets right in the head. All the, the-“ the angel paused, gesturing expansively with his wineglass, “the criticalism, all the ‘maybe if, if youwerejust_better _we wouldn’t be such arseholes. An’ you try, and try and try and none of it, nothing you ever do is good enough!” he finished in a sudden burst of coherence.

Crowley eyed his angel through a concerned alcoholic haze. “We still talking ‘bout Harry?” he asked carefully.

“Hm? Oh. Yes.” Aziraphale winced and sat up. “Just, noticed. Is all.”

“Noticed?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “ ‘m not, not good with children. Not like you are,” he said firmly, over Crowley’s mild protest. “Little humans. Noisy, sticky, messy. Dangerous to books.”

“That ‘bout sums ‘em up, yeah.”

“Harry’s too easy.”

Crowley elected to say nothing and take another sip of his drink.

“Too easy to be good with, “ Aziraphale expanded. “Never shouts or argues, always clean ‘n tidy, always does what he’s tol’ straight away.”

“Mm,” said Crowley. He too, deplored Harry’s obedient streak, but then, he was a demon. It was only to be expected.

“He’s afraid,” Aziraphale said, and his voice was suddenly a lot less drunk and a great deal more angry. “He’s afraid every second of every day that if he doesn’t measure up that we’ll just_ throw him away_. He’s just waiting for us to figure out that he’s not perfect and we don’t actually care about him. That we _never_ cared!”

“Angel,” said Crowley softly, now also considerably more sober. “We do care. You care. You love him.”

“Of course I do!” Aziraphale’s face creased with anguish. “But _those people_ . . . how could they _not_?”

“Bastards,” said Crowley succinctly. “Fuck ‘em.”

Aziraphale took another swig from his wineglass. “That’s an insult to good honest bastards everywhere.”

“Mm. Gabriels then.”

“Hah!” said Aziraphale under his breath. He straightened up and put his wineglass down on the nearest available surface (a small decorative table purchased in 1895 with, of course, an angel motif). His brow creased in concentration and the nearby wine-bottles began to refill as Aziraphale filtered the remaining alcohol out of his system. Regretfully, Crowley followed suit.

“Since we’re on the subject of Harry,” Aziraphale began, once they were both alcohol-free, “I’m reasonably sure that our most recent idea will work. I had Miss Device go over some of the more complex glyphs with me last Thursday and she agrees.”

“Book Girl definitely knows her stuff,” Crowley allowed. He stuck out his tongue experimentally. Sobering up with a miracle always left a peculiar taste in his mouth. “But if something does go wrong . . .”

“I’ve considered that,” Aziraphale said heavily. “The consequences could be disastrous. But we’ve got to do something about it. You said it yourself, we can’t just leave it there. It may not be the current cause of his nightmares but it’s definitely not helping. Humans aren’t meant to have more than one soul in their body. Frankly, thinking about the possible long term implications disturbs me. The sooner it’s gone, the better.”

Crowley grunted. “Have you got all the necessary supplies?” he asked.

Aziraphale nodded. “Yes. There is some preparatory work to be done, but I have all the components here in the shop.”

Crowley grunted again. “’Spose we’d better get ready. We still need to explain things to Harry. Tomorrow morning?”

“After breakfast,” Aziraphale agreed. “I’ll make crêpes.”

* * *

“I have WHAT?”

The words came out far louder than Harry intended. He cringed and stepped back, resisting the urge to cover his face. That always made things worse.

“A piece of Voldemort’s spell stuck in your scar,” Aziraphale repeated gently as if Harry hadn’t just yelled in his face. “A result of the spell failing and rebounding on him.”

“How- how do I get it out? Can I get it out?” Almost without thinking, Harry began to scratch at his scar.

“Hey, hey, hold on,” said Crowley, catching Harry’s hand as he dug his nails back into his forehead. “That’s not gonna help.”

“But what do I do?” Harry asked, trying to drown out the sudden sick feeling. He was pretty sure Aziraphale would not be happy if Harry deposited his half-digested breakfast all over the kitchen floor.

“You need do nothing,” said Aziraphale. “Crowley and I have a plan to deal with it.”

Harry blinked. “You do? Wait, how long did you know about it?”

“Since we first met you,” Aziraphale admitted. He looked mildly embarrassed. “We didn’t know exactly what it was until Miss Device told us, though. Just that it shouldn’t be there.”

Harry swallowed. “Is it- doing anything now?” he asked, half-dreading the answer.

“No,” said Aziraphale firmly. “Right now, its effect on you is very minimal.”

“But how can you know that?”

“Part of my . . . magical abilities allows me to sense certain emotions,” Aziraphale said. “I think that one or both of your parents cast a spell right before they died.” He smiled sadly. “I knew seconds after meeting you that someone had loved you very, very deeply. That love is protecting you, even now. It is forming a seal, keeping the shard from affecting you and frankly doing rather an impressive job of it too.”

“Oh.” Harry stared at his hands, unsure how to feel. If what Aziraphale said was true, then his parents had loved him after all. Loved him so much that . . . His fists clenched. Here was one more thing the Dursleys had lied to him about.

Another question occurred to Harry “That wizard who came here. Dumbledore. Does he know about it?”

“We believe so, yes,” said Aziraphale.

“But,” Harry said, trying to organise his thoughts, “if he knew, why didn’t he get rid of it?”

Harry watched as the two adults shared a long look. Then Crowley nodded to Aziraphale, as if indicating that some sort of permission had been given.

“Harry, you know that our magic is somewhat different to yours?”

“And Anathema’s,” Harry remembered. He looked at them and braced himself, hoping that his next words weren’t going to be a mistake. “Dumbledore was right, wasn’t he? You’re not human.”

“Thought you’d overheard that bit,” said Crowley cheerfully, but Harry noticed the sudden tension in his face. “Nope. That okay?”

“Of course.” For once it was Harry’s turn to be firm. “You saved me. I don’t care what you are.”

Crowley relaxed minutely.

“Really, I don’t,” Harry insisted. He paused. “Will you tell me what you are?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Not just yet, dear. Humans have certain ideas about our particular . . . species. Most of them are not all that accurate.”

“Or flattering,” muttered Crowley, pushing at the bridge of his glasses until they were as far up his nose as possible.

“Ohh,” said Harry, as realisation dawned. “Is it like the goblins? Are the books about you full of mistakes too?”

“They could definitely have used a few better editors,” Aziraphale murmured. “But, to get back to the original point, our abilities are considerably more powerful than a human mage and it still took us days of research with a seer’s assistance to come up with something that might work. I dislike Professor Dumbledore and his attitude towards your situation, but I will say that I believe if he could have removed the shard from you safely, he would have.”

Crowley muttered something inaudible.

Aziraphale sighed. “Dearest, please.”

“Alright, alright,” Crowley grumbled.

“So,” said Harry after a moments silence. “When can you get it out?”

“As soon as possible,” said Aziraphale. “Midnight tonight. If you’re okay with that?”

Harry nodded emphatically.

“I meant what I said,” he told them both as they rose from their chairs and started to clear away the remains of breakfast. “It doesn’t matter what you are.” He grinned daringly at Crowley. “You’re nice people.”

Crowley grinned back at him. “Harry Potter,” he announced, “you’re an incorrigible brat. I’m so proud.”

* * *

The actual preparations for the ritual took less time than Aziraphale had expected. There were several potion components to be mixed, a chalk circle to draw and Crowley spent several hours carefully etching very specific sigils into a mason jar that he usually used for gardening purposes, but they were all complete well before six o’clock that evening.

“We can’t do it right now?” Harry asked anxiously at ten minutes past six.

“I’m afraid not dear,” Aziraphale replied, suddenly realising that he was going be dealing with an extremely tense eleven year old for the next six hours. “The timing is rather important. Entrance into a new day and all that.”

“Oh.”

Fortunately, Crowley had apparently foreseen the need to keep Harry busy for the evening and was prepared. Aziraphale, entering his small upstairs sitting-room half an hour later, found that a video player had been added, his television was now considerably more up to date and a large bowl of perfectly made popcorn was occupying the coffee table.

“Movie night, angel!” Crowley explained upon having an enquiring look shot at him. He waved a video cassette box at Aziraphale, who took it with interest.

“Star Wars,” he read, noting the image on the front of a young man holding what looked like a glowing sword. “Oh yes, you mentioned this before.”

“Yep. You’ll love it,” Crowley promised.

He was right. The farm boy turned resistance fighter rescuing the capable princess, ably assisted by the handsome morally grey space smuggler, spoke to something in Aziraphale. He teared up when Luke lost his family and Ben Kenobi died, gasped in horror when Princess Leia’s home planet was destroyed, and cheered delightedly when Han Solo returned in the nick of time to help Luke destroy the Death Star. “I knew Han wouldn’t really abandon them,” he said happily, his head resting on Crowley’s shoulder. “That was wonderful.”

“Pretty good,” Crowley agreed. “Still got time. How about we watch the next one?”

The Empire Strikes Back proved slightly more emotionally harrowing.

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, as they watched the credits roll.

“Yes Angel?”

“If you don’t put on the next one right now I will not be responsible for my actions.”

“Yes Angel.”

“If all three of them do not get a happy ending,” Aziraphale muttered as Crowley slip the tape into the video player, “Mr. Lucas is going to receive a strongly worded letter.”

“No comment,” Crowley said. But he winked at Harry when Aziraphale wasn’t looking.

By the time they finished Return of the Jedi, Aziraphale was extremely satisfied with the ending and it was half an hour to midnight.

* * *

Aziraphale and Crowley double-checked the chalk circle, carefully examining every line.

Then, at last, they directed Harry to sit in the middle while they sat at either side of him.

Aziraphale handed Harry a cup full of clear liquid which he had poured from a glass pitcher. Then he handed another one to Crowley and poured one from himself. “Bottoms up,” he said as the clock on the wall began to chime midnight.

As all three of them closed their eyes and drank deeply from their cups, the chalk circle began to glow.

* * *

When Crowley opened his eyes again he found himself standing next to Aziraphale in what looked like a nursery. Soft toys and brightly coloured wooden blocks lay scattered across the floor. An empty crib stood in one corner, the blankets tossed askew. Cartoon animals featured on the wallpaper.

The entire room was illuminated by the glow of a large rose-coloured half sphere that pulsed with energy. It was half-transparent and underneath the pinkish glow an oily, smouldering shadow writhed and twisted.

Aziraphale and Crowley eyed it with mutual mixture of disgust and wonder.

“Urgh,” Aziraphale sniffed, when the greasy shadow twisted in their direction. “Foul thing.”

“You can say that again,” Crowley agreed, shuddering. As a demon, he could sense all the ‘baser’ emotions in humans. Pride, greed, gluttony- well, the point was he was intimately familiar with the seven most popular. The shadow stank of all of them, in many different variations. “Right. We’re sure it can’t get through the outer wards?”

“Definitely.”

“Then let’s get this over with.”

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand briefly. “Remember, once I’ve brought the barrier down, it’s all up to you.”

Crowley nodded, glancing down at the mason jar in his other hand. The sigils on it glowed reassuringly. “Got it,” he promised. “I’m ready.”

Aziraphale kissed his cheek. Then he approached the glowing sphere and with very deliberate precision placed his hands on it. At first nothing happened, then, very slowly, tiny cracks began to appear in the surface of the pink light, spreading out from Aziraphale’s hands. The angel’s body shimmered, then glowed brightly until all Crowley could see was an Aziraphale-shaped outline.

The outline exploded. 

A million tiny shooting stars thudded into the walls of the room, making them glitter like the walls of a mine-tunnel salted with gold.

The oily black smoke, now free from its prison, rose up, making a noise like an angry hurricane. It swirled around Crowley for a second and then made straight for the nursery window, but the second it touched the pane it slammed backwards, roaring with pain.

_‘OH NO. I DON’T THINK SO’, _said the voice of an angel of the Lord. The volume was almost deafening, like a thousand voices speaking as one. ‘_YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE’._

_That’s my cue_, thought Crowley, and he opened the mason jar, feeding power into the sigils he’d etched so carefully earlier.

The oily smoky shape roared again, upon finding itself suddenly and inexorably drawn towards the shaking jar in Crowley’s hands. It tried to twist away and flee, but the sigils on the mason jar shone brighter, glowing bright silver and red, their pull increasing. Crowley held on desperately, his wings out and flapping wildly as he attempted to stay upright in the gale created by the struggle. The shadow screeched in agony and rage and made another spirited attempt to pull away.

Crowley grunted with effort, pouring as much power as he dared into the bindings. “Come on, come on,” he urged the thing. “Into the nice jar like a good little evil sssoul fragment.”

For a moment it seemed like the thing would break free. Then, with a last wail of outrage, the fragment bounced like a particularly out of control bungee cord and thudded into the vibrating jar.

Crowley slammed the lid shut. “Gotcha.”

One second passed in dead silence. Then another one. Crowley wobbled unsteadily, took a step and probably would have fallen if not for the strong angelic arms suddenly supporting him.

“I’ve got you, dearest,” Aziraphale murmured, human-shaped once more. “Well done.”

“Angel,” Crowley croaked, staring at where the glowing sphere had been, “Angel, _look._”

Aziraphale looked.

“Oh my goodness,” he said vaguely.

Another glowing half-sphere was visible. It had been underneath, Aziraphale realised, with Voldemort’s soul shard trapped between it and the outer one. And underneath this one-

The young woman had the vaguest of resemblances to Petunia Dursley. Her hair was a deep red, her eyes green, and in her arms was a very familiar-looking sleeping baby.

She was so young, Aziraphale thought, an unsettling horror creeping over him. He’d known, of course, from what Petunia had told Crowley that Lily Potter had been young when she died, but-

_God Almighty in her Heaven. She’s barely twenty-one. She looks like our Harry’s teenage sister._

Aziraphale fought down a powerful urge to be sick.

“I’ve kept him safe as best I could,” said the echo of Lily Potter. “It’s been so hard. I’m so tired.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Aziraphale softly, looking at the foul thing still squirming in Crowley’s jar. “It must have been very difficult. But it’s over now. You can rest.”

“The rest of that soul is still there, out in the world,” whispered Lily.

“Yes,” said Crowley, “but Harry has us now. We’ll protect him.”

The shade of Lily Potter regarded them both carefully. Then she nodded. The glowing barrier around her slowly collapsed and she held the baby in her arms out to them.

Crowley handed the jar to Aziraphale and took the small version of Harry as gently as possible, cradling the baby carefully against his chest. When he looked back towards Lily, she smiled at them once more and then faded away.

“Was that really-“

“Part of Lily Potter’s soul,” said Aziraphale, looking both awed and thoughtful. “But uncorrupted. Incredible.”

“She’s gone.”

“Moved on. But her protection remains. It always will, I suspect. She died pouring all of her magic into her love for Harry. There’s a power in that to rival even ours.”

The angel gazed down at the baby in Crowley’s arms as he wriggled and began to wake. Green eyes blinked sleepily back at him and then brightened in recognition.

“Cwow! Az!” little Harry exclaimed, beaming at them. He reached out for Aziraphale and gripped one of the angel’s fingers with a tiny hand.

Aziraphale smiled back at him. “Hello my dear. Might I have my hand back?”

“No,” said the baby firmly, trying to tighten his grip. “My Az!”

“Time to let go, dear,” Aziraphale said gently, withdrawing his fingers from the baby’s grasp. “We have to go now.”

Little Harry’s eyes welled up with tears and he clutched at Crowley’s scarf. “No,” he insisted. “No. No go! My Az! My Cwow!”

“There now, hatchling,” murmured Crowley, pressing his lips to the infant’s head. “It’s alright. We’ll both be with you when you wake up in the world.”

“That’s right,” promised Aziraphale, as the house faded around them. “You won’t be alone.”

* * *

When Aziraphale opened his eyes again, he found himself back in the bookshop, with Crowley beside him and Harry sitting opposite, a dazed look on his face. “Are you alright?”

Harry blinked and then seemed to come to. He looked around slowly. “Yeah. Did something happen?”

Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other.

“Nah, not really,” said Crowley.

“Well,” said Aziraphale, gingerly picking up the stoppered jar in front of him, “apart from getting this out.”

Harry gazed at the smoky shape fluttering inside the glass. “Is- is that it? Part of Voldemort’s spell?”

“Mm,” said Crowley. He regarded the jar thoughtfully for a moment and shared another look with Aziraphale, who nodded at him.

They both snapped their fingers. An ear-piercing shriek filled the air and the jar shook violently. Then, with a pop, it vanished.

“Good riddance,” said Aziraphale, with considerable satisfaction.


	17. Nightmares III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, more trauma.

_‘I have lately made the acquaintance of one Mr. A. Z. Fell. He is a delightful old fellow and full of good cheer. We met at Mrs Abbington’s dinner party and had a comfortable talk on the subject of my novel which has lately been published. Not that I let him know that he sat opposite the anonymous author! It was a struggle not to blush as he unknowingly praised my labours in the highest terms. It is strange. I had fallen into a near melancholy and felt unable to write for weeks, but upon returning home after dinner that night I felt utterly seized with the urge to put pen to paper._ – Jane Austen in a letter to a friend. 1812

* * *

After the ritual, things changed.

For Harry it was like a switch had been flicked and the lights were suddenly on for the first time in years. His head felt completely clear, having lost a foggy feeling that had been there so long that he’d thought it was just how things were. He felt more awake than he’d ever been and the whole world seemed brighter to him. The colours were more intense, the smells sharper. Everything, as he tried to describe to Aziraphale some days later, was just _more. _

Harry’s nightmares did not stop, but they were no longer as severe and ceased to be a nightly occurrence. In consequence, his energy levels, already higher than usual from the effect of regular meals and the continuing lack of having to do almost every single chore in the household, skyrocketed further.

This resulted in a few days of Harry feeling incredibly on edge about his sudden desire to fidget constantly until Crowley realised what the problem was and towed him around London to burn off some of the excess energy by super-gluing apparently valuable coins to the footpath in the more affluent areas of the city. The three hours that they spent in Kensington proved especially entertaining.

After that Aziraphale decided to step in and soon the more educational tourist spots in London all received visits from the occupants of AZ Fell & Co. It had occurred to Aziraphale one morning that though Harry would be educated in the history of magical Britain once he was at Hogwarts, without intervention the boy would remain woefully ignorant in the history of, for lack of a better word, the mundane. Thus began various excursions to the many museums and art galleries in London, where Harry was introduced to an almost overwhelming amount of information while Aziraphale declaimed at length about various historical eras.

Crowley tended to follow on behind them, still, as ever, watching Aziraphale’s back, and keeping up a sotto voce running commentary consisting of loudly whispering where various precious artifacts had been stolen from, as well as airing the dirty laundry of various historical figures who had been immortalised by statues.

(“Slaver, murderer, _terrible_ poet, pirate, thief, complete fashion disaster, murderer _and_ terrible poet . . .”)

It was in the more scientific institutions that Crowley became the one giving enthusiastic lectures, his eternal appreciation for the inventiveness of humanity edging out his habitual cynicism. Their visit to the London Motor Museum was particularly memorable. The tour guides had started taking notes.

Harry hung on their words, absorbing it all like a small dark-haired sponge. After ten years of having anything that he showed even the slightest interest in snatched away from him by Aunt Petunia, usually with an admonishment to stop looking at dangerous abnormal things, the opportunity to see and read about almost anything he liked was dizzying.

A notebook which Aziraphale had gifted him soon became filled with notes and sketches of all kinds. Historical facts shared a page with rough drawings of Crowley’s Bentley. After a trip to the British Museum’s Egyptian section another page featured Harry’s thoughts on the process of mummification next to a drawing of a Jedi on a flying motorbike.

This particular Jedi wore a bow-tie.

* * *

Abruptly, the week before Harry was due to start school, things took a turn for the worse.

Harry’s nightmares returned, intense and horrifying. Two of them ruined his bedsheets. The third, which caused Harry to wake screaming and brought Aziraphale and Crowley through the door almost at a run, resulted in the ruining of Aziraphale’s waistcoat by the partial return of Harry’s dinner.

Harry, still shuddering convulsively, tried to splutter out a choked apology. Aziraphale ignored this, dismissed the stain with a click of his fingers and then lifted Harry off of the floor. “It’s alright my dear,” he said soothingly as Harry clutched at his shoulder. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

To Harry’s surprise, Aziraphale did not put him back on his bed. Instead, Harry found himself being carried to the sitting room where he was gently deposited into one of the large comfortable armchairs and one of Aziraphale’s innumerable tartan blankets was wrapped around him. Crowley, who had disappeared briefly in the direction of the kitchen, soon returned holding two steaming mugs of cocoa, which he passed to Aziraphale and Harry before stretching out on the sofa.

Harry took a cautious sip of his cocoa. Aziraphale, now ensconced in the room’s other armchair, gave him a look halfway between sympathetic and encouraging. “Better now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Harry replied slowly. He took another sip of cocoa. The warmth of it seemed to spread through him, reaching down to his toes. “Sorry about your waistcoat.”

Aziraphale waved away the apology. “Not to worry,” he said. “It’s perfectly fine, see?” He gestured towards his spotless front, then shot an irritated look at Crowley, who looked rather smug for some reason.

“Knew you could have fixed it yourself,” Crowley murmured.

Aziraphale flushed and his irritated look grew more pronounced. “Yes, well. That’s not important right now.”

“Mm hm.”

“Oh shush, you detestable creature,” Aziraphale said, but Harry could tell by his reluctant smile that he didn’t really mean it.

Then Aziraphale’s smile faded and Harry found himself the subject of an appraising blue gaze that made a small knot start to form in the base of his stomach. “Harry,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t want to push things, but . . . is there anything you need to tell us? Something that’s been bothering you lately?”

Harry’s insides squirmed. He met Aziraphale’s eyes for a second before the urge to look absolutely anywhere else got the better of him. He stared down at the mug of cocoa in his hands, clutching it like a lifeline.

“It’s just that your nightmares seem to be getting worse again,” Aziraphale continued when a few moments passed while Harry said nothing. “I wondered if perhaps there might be something that we could help with?”

Harry still said nothing. He just continued to stare down at the mug in his hands. As the silence lengthened, unbidden, a thought popped into his head.

_I never had cocoa before. They never let me._

Another thought.

_I never had a bedroom before. They never let me._

Another.

_They never let me have clothes that fit. Or toys that weren’t broken._

And another.

_They hated everything. Everything I did. And they never, ever, asked if I needed help. Not ever._

There was a lump in his throat. He swallowed, once, twice, and then finally managed to clear it. When he looked up, Aziraphale was still looking at him, the same kindness in his eyes that he’d shown ever since Harry had walked into the kitchen that first morning in search of breakfast.

“I’m worried,” Harry admitted in a whisper. “About school.”

There was an indeterminate noise from Crowley’s direction, but Harry ignored it. Instead, now that he’d begun to talk, he focused on getting the words out.

“I don’t know anyone there. And they’ll probably all know each other and know magic better than me and be way ahead and I’m famous because of Voldemort so they’ll all expect me to be great but I’m not! I’m going to be the worst wizard ever. They’ll think they shouldn’t have let me in, just like the blond boy said!”

“Hold on a minute,” Aziraphale interrupted, cutting off Harry’s panicked flow of words. “What blond boy?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably and once again took a deep interest in the contents of his mug.

It was still cocoa.

“I- There was a boy,” he began. “At the clothes shop. He was beside me when I was getting my uniform fitted. He said- he said . . .”

“Yes?” said Aziraphale encouragingly.

“He said people who weren’t- who didn’t-“ Harry struggled, trying to get the words out. He could feel his face heating up. “That people who hadn’t grown up with magic shouldn’t-” Harry paused again, the lump back in his throat.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. “I see. I take it that this boy had opinions on who should and should not be attending Hogwarts?”

“Yeah,” Harry mumbled.

“Urghhhh,” groaned Crowley from his position on the sofa. He had shifted, so that he was now lying on his back, head hanging upside down off the edge of the seat cushions, while his legs extended past the back of the sofa and up the wall. “Wizard nonsense. I knew it. Was he rich-looking?”

Harry blinked. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment and then offered: “He was very clean. And he had gel in his hair.”

“Suspicious,” agreed Aziraphale before Crowley could reply. “But not damning evidence.”

“I bet he was rich,” Crowley insisted. He twisted suddenly, going from his upside down position to leaning casually against the side of the sofa with his legs crossed in one smooth movement. Crowley took off his sunglasses and looked at Harry, his serpents eyes glittering. “Don’t listen to rich people, kid. Their favourite thing to do is to make clubs, tell everyone how great they are and then insist that you only get to join if you do exactly what they say. It’s one of the oldest scams in the book.”

“You’d know,” Aziraphale muttered to him.

“Hey! Nothing to do with me, angel! The humans-“

“Came up with it on their own,” Aziraphale finished for him. “I know, I know.”

Harry perked up, momentarily distracted despite himself. Ever since they’d admitted to him that they weren’t human both men had been a little less careful with their words. Harry still didn’t know what they were, but the little tidbits that they let drop every now and then were fascinating.

(Harry had, in fact, considered that Crowley’s favourite pet name for Aziraphale might be a description rather than an affectionate nickname, but had changed his mind less than an hour later. He was sure a real angel would have told him to forgive the Dursleys and go back to them, instead of idly wondering if it was still acceptable to cast a plague of boils on objectionable people.)

“Well, they did,” Crowley said sulkily. “Anyway,” he said, shifting his attention back to Harry, “enough about that. Harry, you are not going to be the worst wizard ever.”

Harry tried not to look to sceptical.

“Really,” Crowley said, “look at Book Girl-”

“Anathema,” Aziraphale interjected automatically.

“Right, yes. Look at Anathema. Never been near any of the magical schools and can’t use a wand to save her life. Still a witch. Damn good one too, in my opinion. Of course, the ones at Hogwarts might disagree. Are they right?”

“No,” protested Harry, stung into defense of Tadfield’s local witch. He was deeply fond of Anathema, who always had a packet of custard creams in her cupboards for visitors. “Of course not!”

“Right,” said Crowley again. “Because there’s more than one way to do magic. Definitely more than one way to be a mage. Or witch or wizard. Whatever you want to call it. So some kid’s got it into his head that his way of doing it is best. So what? Doesn’t mean he's right.”

“But,” Harry said, “I’m supposed to be that kind of wizard. Amn’t I?”

Crowley shrugged. “You could be if you want. Don’t know about ‘supposed to’.”

“But,” said Harry again, still struggling with his words, “all the other wizards at school are going to expect me to be that kind of wizard.”

“Ehh. To hell with other people’s expectations. If being a mage doesn’t work out for you we’ll find you a different school. You can be whatever you want. Mage, librarian, car mechanic, teacher, musician, whatever you like. People’s expectations aren’t really about you anyway. They’re about them and what they want.”

Harry nodded, but he was still unconvinced. It was easy to feel confident here in the warm flat above the bookshop with Aziraphale and Crowley beside him. Things were going to be different at school. He’d be alone, he wouldn’t know anyone and they’d probably all know each other. Not to mention, while he was willing to believe that the teachers there probably wanted the best for him, the little bit he’d overheard of Headmaster Dumbledore’s conversation with his guardians did not fill him with trust.

He swallowed down the last few mouthfuls of cocoa and tried to ignore the twisting starting back up in his stomach.

“More cocoa?” Aziraphale asked, holding out his hand for the mug.

Harry nodded and handed it over. As he watched Aziraphale leave in the direction of the kitchen he added, ‘make cocoa’ to his mental list of ‘things Aziraphale does without magic.’

It was quite a bit longer than his list of things that Crowley did without magic (at least half of which had the qualifier ‘for Aziraphale’ tacked onto them.)

“Y’know,” Crowley said quietly while they listened to the sounds of Aziraphale pottering around in the kitchen, “back when I was . . . young, people had expectations about me too. About what I was going to be. What my purpose was. Turned out they were wrong. Then some stuff happened, got myself a bit of a reputation. Got saddled with another load of expectations that I had to live up to, or else. Took a while, but I got out of that. Now the only opinion I’ve got to worry about is Aziraphale‘s and he, well, he never expects me to be anything but myself. And that goes for you too. We just want you to be Harry. You’re the one who gets to decide who that is.”

“Probably Harry the terrible wizard,” Harry said, still unwilling to let go of his gloom.

Crowley shrugged. “Better than being Harry the terrible human. And you won’t be terrible. There’ll be plenty of kids at the same stage as you. If you get stuck, you can always-”

“Ask questions,” Harry recited before Crowley could finish. “I guess.” He sagged back in the armchair.

“Right. You’ll be fine.”

“But what if I still don’t understand.”

“Ask more questions until you do. That’s what humans are good at.”

* * *

Dagon, Lord of the Files, glared at the little bottle that the Disposable Demon Eric had just placed on their desk. Inside it, oily black smoke coiled and shuddered.

“What,” they said in a voice like the dying gasps of a thousand fish, “is this?”

“Special delivery,” said the Eric, bouncing nervously in place. “Courtesy of-,” the Eric broke off, hesitating. “You know, _them_.”


	18. Trains and Friends

‘_Patrick is said to have banished all the snakes from the island of Ireland. This story is generally held to be apocryphal, as Roman records from the third century BC make note of the island having no reptiles centuries before Patrick set foot in Ireland. The legend persists however and there is a folktale which insists Patrick did battle with a giant snake living in Lough Derg, Donegal and that the blood from the snake’s wounds turned the waters red, resulting in the Lough’s name. _

-Dermot Scanlon, 1982, Irish Myths and Legends, An Gúm.

* * *

King’s Cross station on the first of September proved to be the most crowded place Harry had ever found himself in. A frankly bewildering number of people were talking, shouting, pushing trolleys loaded down with cases, and attempting to free snacks that had got stuck in vending machines. Harry stuck as close as possible to Aziraphale’s side, while Crowley walked next to them, pushing a trolley loaded down with Harry’s own belongings.

The idea that he had enough belongings to fill even one suitcase still felt very strange to Harry.

“What platform was it again, angel?” Crowley asked as they made their way through the crowd.

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed at the question. “Nine and . . . three-quarters?” he said, squinting dubiously at a piece of parchment. “I haven’t used a locomotive in some time, but that doesn’t sound right.”

“Trains, Aziraphale,” said Crowley, in a voice of long-suffering. “They’re called trains now.” Over the tops of his sunglasses his eyebrows did the little dance that indicated when he was rolling his eyes.

Aziraphale smiled innocently. “Oh yes, of course. Things change so quickly, don’t they?”

“Oh for- you see what I have to put up with?” Crowley muttered to Harry.

Harry just grinned at him.

“Anyway,” said Crowley, refusing to rise to this bait, “that probably just means there’s some sort of dimensional folding going on, like at Diagon Alley. Trick is to figure out where.”

“Presumably somewhere between-” Aziraphale started to say, before a trolley collided with the back of his leg and he let out a pained ‘Oof!’.

“Oh I’m so sorry!” a woman’s voice exclaimed behind them. “Fred, be careful with that!”

Harry and his guardians turned around and found themselves looking at a red-haired woman surrounded by equally red-haired boys (and one girl) of various ages. The woman gave Aziraphale an apologetic look

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “Fred,” she said to one of her sons, who was the mirror image of the boy standing next to him, “apologise to the man!”

Both twins were staring at Crowley as if they’d seen a ghost. For his part, Crowley regarded them with a puzzled frown. Eventually, the one who had been identified as Fred tore his nervous gaze away from Crowley and seemed to recover his wits. “Dreadfully sorry, sir!” he said to Aziraphale. “Trolley got away from me.”

“Not to worry, young man,” said Aziraphale, accepting the apology. He gave the boy’s mother a benevolent nod. “No harm done.”

She smiled back at him with the air of a woman who was extremely glad that someone who looked as if he had a lot more money than she did wasn’t going to hold a grudge.

“Diagon Alley!” Crowley said suddenly, the puzzled frown clearing from his face as he pointed triumphantly in the direction of the red haired twins. “That’s where I’ve seen you two before!”

“Excuse me?” said their mother in a suspicious voice. She glanced from Crowley to her twin sons, her face creasing into a worried frown.

“Eh, don’t think so,” said Fred innocently.

“Maybe you’ve mixed us up with someone else?” his twin suggested helpfully.

“Nope. Definitely you two,” Crowley insisted as their mother’s gaze started to narrow dangerously. “Which means,” he continued, “that you know how to get to the platform, yes?” He gestured between platforms nine and ten, indicating the lack of platform nine and three quarters.

“Oh!” said Fred, with a relieved but still nervous grin. “Yes, I remember running into you now.”

“Literally,” added his brother. “Sorry about that.”

“Again,” said Fred.

“Right,” said Crowley, “so . . . platform nine and three quarters then?” He gestured towards Harry. “Our boy needs to catch the train.”

The twins’ mother glanced at Harry and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my goodness. Harry!” she exclaimed, her frown fading instantly. “Oh, you’re Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley!”

It was Aziraphale and Crowley’s turn to share a surprised look as Harry edged as far behind Aziraphale as he could without making it obvious. All of the woman’s children were now eyeing him with interest. The only girl, who looked to be the youngest, was blatantly staring.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said carefully. “Have we . . . met?”

“Oh no. But Professor Dumbledore told us all about you.” The woman held out her hand and Aziraphale shook it automatically. “Molly Weasley. I’m delighted to meet you.”

“Er, likewise,” said Aziraphale automatically.

“Charmed,” added Crowley. “All about us? Really?”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs Weasley happily. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that Harry was safe and sound with responsible wizards.”

“Ye-ess,” drawled Crowley. “Responsible wizards. That’s us.”

Molly Weasley beamed at him.

“So . . . the platform?” asked Crowley, slightly non-plussed by this reaction.

“Oh it’s quite simple really,” said Mrs Weasley “You just walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten and as long as you’re not a muggle you’ll pass right through.”

Aziraphale looked at the barrier, narrowing his eyes. “Oh,” he said after a moment. “I see it now. That’s quite a complex old enchantment.”

“You can actually _see_ the enchantment?” Mrs Weasley asked, sounding impressed.

Aziraphale shrugged modestly. “It’s a knack.”

* * *

Yesterday, if someone had asked Ron Weasley to describe what he thought the Boy-Who-Lived looked like, he probably would’ve imagined an eleven year old version of his oldest brother, Bill. Or maybe his second oldest brother, Charlie. Someone who was tall, naturally confident, popular and good at just about everything.

He would not have described a short, skinny boy wearing a tartan-coloured jumper and black trousers with a snake pattern, who was trying to hide behind a man who reminded Ron of a fussy schoolteacher.

(The trousers were pretty cool, though.)

“-and this is Ron,” his mother finished, having decided to introduce them all. “He’s starting this year as well.”

Ron smiled nervously as the two men and the Boy-Who-Lived glanced at him. It had taken him all of thirty seconds to decide that the one that Fred and George had admitted to ‘accidentally running into’ in Diagon Alley was the coolest wizard he’d ever met. With his sunglasses and snake tattoo and his all black outfit, the man had exactly the type of style Ron’s Mum disapproved of.

_Usually anyway_, he thought, while his Mum continued chatting enthusiastically with the skinny man and his friend about Hogwarts.

Ron personally didn’t believe the twins’ story for a second. He knew for a fact that the they’d tried to sneak into Knockturn Alley the day Mum had taken them schoolbook shopping and he would bet a box of chocolate frogs that it was there that the twins had met the man. Fred and George had been _weird_ when they’d got back. They were still being a bit weird now, Ron noticed, sneaking glances at the skinny man when they thought no one else was watching.

In the case of Percy and Ginny, they were right. Ron’s other siblings were sneaking glances at the Boy-Who-Lived instead. Well, Percy was anyway. There was nothing sneaky about Ginny’s open mouthed stare.

Ron gave Harry Potter an sympathetic look. _Sorry,_ he thought, _they’re always like this._

The other boy locked eyes with him for a moment and then, to Ron’s relief, smiled hesitantly back.

Eventually, the adults conversation wound to a close and as they began to herd their respective children towards the platform and the waiting train, Ron risked one last quick glance at the Boy-Who-Lived.

_Thought he was supposed to be living with muggle family, _he mused. _Wonder what happened?_

* * *

In a fashionable coffee shop some considerable distance from King’s Cross Station, Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, Prince of Hell sat in an artistically designed and incredibly uncomfortable chair.

“Why,” they demanded in irritation, “do you inzizt on meeting in thiz plaze?”

The Archangel Gabriel, coffee cup in hand and at perfect ease in his own ergonomic nightmare disguised as useable furniture, shrugged. “I like the beverages here. Don’t you?”

Beelzebub took a sip from their own cup. It _was_ incredibly good, but they glared at the archangel anyway. It was the principle of the thing.

“Zzo,” they said, returning to the business at hand, “the boy iz a mage.”

“Looks like it,” Gabriel agreed. “Good thing we decided to be hands off about this, eh?”

“Magezz are trouble,” Beelzebub conceded, remembering an unfortunate incident in the tenth century. They’d avoided coming to Earth for some time after that.

“Sure are. If anyone has to deal with them, best that it’s our own troublemakers, eh?” said Gabriel, giving them a dazzling smile.

Beelzebub squashed the urge to punch him in his stupid perfect teeth.

“Zpeaking of thoze two, we reezently rezeived a package from them.” Beelzebub placed a paper bag on the table with a clink and carefully pushed it towards the archangel.

Gabriel regarded them suspiciously for a moment. Then he very, very gingerly inspected the contents of the bag. Beelzebub greatly enjoyed the sudden drain of colour from his film-star-handsome face.

“What,” said Gabriel in genuine revulsion as he pushed the bag and its contents back towards the demon, “is _that_?”

* * *

Harry stood, waving goodbye through the train window, his stomach twisting more and more as the train pulled away from the station and Crowley and Aziraphale slowly faded from view. Once he could no longer see them he flopped onto the seat, laid his head back and shut his eyes.

_This is going to be a complete disaster,_ a stray thought informed him._ You’re going to be useless at everything. As usual._

“No. No, _stop_,” Harry muttered aloud. “Everything’s going to be fine. There’ll be plenty of other kids who didn’t know about magic.” He pulled at the cuff of his sleeve, worrying the fabric. “I can always ask questions if I get stuck.”

“Uh, hello?” said a voice.

Harry snapped his mouth shut and jerked towards the sound. It was one of the boys from the family they’d met in the station. He was half in- half out of the compartment doorway. The boy looked around the empty compartment and then back at Harry. “Sorry,” he said. “Are these seats taken? I thought I heard talking.”

“No,” said Harry with a brightness he didn’t feel. “Just me here.” He winced inwardly at his own foolishness. The boy -Ron, he remembered- must have overheard him.

_Great_, Harry thought dejectedly. _I’m not even there yet and I’ve already let someone see what a mess I am._

Ron looked around the compartment again, then shrugged and slumped onto the seat across from Harry. “Hi again.”

“Hi,” said Harry.

An awkward silence ensued.

“So,” said Ron eventually, “you’re really Harry Potter then?”

“Yes,” said Harry. He wondered if everyone was going to ask him that. He hoped not. It was going to get annoying fast.

“And you’ve really got . . . “ Ron gestured vaguely in the direction of his forehead.

Harry blinked. “How - Does everyone know about that?”

“Well, yeah,” said Ron. “It’s not every day a baby survives the Killing Curse with only a scar.”

“Oh. The scar. I mean, yeah the scar,” babbled Harry, now uncomfortably aware that Ron was staring at him. Desperately, he pushed up his fringe. “It’s there, see?”

Ron gasped audibly. “It really does look like a lightning bolt! That’s so cool!” Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, flushing. “I didn’t- I mean, I forgot. About your Mum and Dad. I’m really sorry.”

Harry decided that Ron Weasley was probably alright. “It’s okay,” he assured the other boy. “I know you didn’t mean it like that.”

Ron nodded gratefully. “So,” he said in the tone of someone definitely about to change the subject, “what house d’you reckon you’ll be in?”

Harry gave him a blank look, before remembering that the blond boy from Diagon Alley had mentioned something about houses. “Dunno,” he shrugged. “There’s Hufflepuff and – Slytherer? Is that right?”

Harry spent the next few minutes listening to Ron’s explanation of the Houses of Hogwarts, their various reputations and Ron’s opinion on each of them.

“- and they say You-Know-Who himself was in Slyther_in_,” Ron finished with a significant look.

“Um,” Harry said, wondering if this was some sort of wizard code, “who’s You-Know-Who?”

It was Ron’s turn to give Harry a blank look. This was quickly replaced by an expression of agonised awkwardness as he realised that Harry was asking a genuine question.

“You-Know-Who is . . .” Ron paused and wet his lips while Harry looked at him expectantly. “He’s what we call, you know . . . _Voldemort.”_

“You do?” said Harry. “Why?”

He listened in fascination as Ron explained.

“So, people really just call him You-Know-Who?” Harry asked. “Everyone?”

“Most people, yeah,” Ron said. “They say Dumbledore always calls him by his name though. ‘Course, he’s a brilliant wizard. Really powerful. And I heard Mum say once that Dumbledore actually taught You-Know-Who when he was at Hogwarts.”

“He went to Hogwarts?” Harry asked in surprise. Somehow the thought had never occurred to him. Now that it had, he felt . . . odd.

“Well, yeah,” said Ron. “Nearly everyone does. Didn’t your guardians? Uh, they are your guardians, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, “and no, they didn’t. They were both home-schooled. I think,” he added, remembering that Crowley had given that explanation _before_ Harry had guessed that they weren’t human. 

“Huh.” Ron chewed his lip for a moment. Then something seemed to occur to him. “Wait, do _they_ call You-Know-Who by name? Your guardians, I mean?”

“Yes,” said Harry without thinking, “but sometimes Crowley – the thin one, with the sunglasses – calls him Voldefart instead.”

* * *

It turned out that once he was not having sudden choking fits, Ron Weasley was pretty good company. His manner had lightened considerably when Harry had explained that he’d not always been able to afford the kind of clothes he had now, and lightened further when the food trolley arrived and Harry has insisted on sharing

Halfway through their food and after discussing a robbery in Gringotts (which Harry was disturbed to realise had happened the same day he’d been there), Harry and Ron were interrupted by the arrival of a round-faced boy looking for his toad and a girl helping him who reminded Harry so much of Pepper that he wiped his glasses to make sure he was seeing her properly. Hermione Granger, aged eleven, was already wearing her school robes and casually mentioned that she had memorised all of her schoolbooks, cover to cover.

Harry, who had spent many evenings the last few weeks poring over his schoolbooks with Aziraphale and still hadn’t got more than a quarter way through them, regarded her with a mix of awe and irritation. Ron, who had just failed to perform a spell meant to change the colour of his pet rat, merely looked irritated.

As there was no toad to be found in Harry and Ron’s compartment, Hermione and the toadless boy soon moved on, only to be replaced a short time later by the blond boy from Diagon Alley and two of his friends.

Things did not go well. Especially when the blond boy, having introduced himself as one Draco Malfoy, proceeded to insult Ron’s family and then offered to help Harry meet ‘the right sort of people’.

Harry, sick with anxiety over school and angry on behalf of his new friend, felt his fists bunch. But he couldn’t fight. He knew he couldn’t, whatever Malfoy had said. He would be blamed and Malfoy would be the victim because Harry had used violence. Because words could never hurt you.

(Also, he was outnumbered and Malfoy’s friends, Crabbe and Goyle, were large and frankly intimidating.)

So he summoned up his best impression of Aziraphale explaining to a customer why the first edition they were looking for was not available and said: “thanks anyway Malfoy, but I think I can figure out the right sort for myself. After all,” he added, giving the blond boy a brilliant smile, “all I have to do is look for whoever is the total opposite of you.”

Ron who had looked even more ready to fight, snorted loudly, his outraged expression disappearing. Malfoy’s face, on the other hand, had gone from pale to red with fury. “You’d want to watch out, Potter,” he spat. “If you’re not careful you’ll end up the same way as your parents!”

The compartment went silent. Harry stared at Malfoy in sick shock. Dimly he was aware that Ron and even Crabbe and Goyle were all pale-faced and staring too. Malfoy's mouth was moving silently, as if he was trying to swallow the words he'd just said.

_I don’t think he meant to say that out loud, _Harry thought through the sudden fog in his head._ It’s always weird when that happens._

“Malfoy-“ Ron began to say, his voice outraged, but before he could say anything further, Malfoy turned on his heel and stormed out of the compartment, Crabbe and Goyle close behind him.

As soon as they were gone Harry collapsed onto his seat. His breath had started to come in short, sharp gasps and he was horribly aware that he was about to have his first panic attack without either Aziraphale or Crowley around.

_Deep breaths,_ he reminded himself, while his insides squirmed. _In and out. I can do this._

After a moment, a bottle of water made its way into Harry’s field of vision and he looked up to see Ron in front of him with a sympathetic look on his face. “Are you okay, mate?”

Harry managed a nod and took the water gratefully.

“Don’t listen to anything he said,” Ron urged. “Should’ve known he’d be a git. My dad said Malfoy’s dad got up to awful stuff during the war, but they could never prove anything and-“

As Harry got his breathing under control, Ron rambled on about the Malfoy family. It was oddly soothing to listen to someone he’d just met get angry on his behalf and by the time the train was coming to the end of its journey Harry felt much better.

* * *

The appearance of Rubeus Hagrid when they exited the train and his cheerful greeting to both Harry and Ron further improved Harry’s mood. As Hagrid loaded them aboard a sturdy little boat to cross a lake on the other side of which stood Hogwarts Castle, Harry forgot all about Malfoy. It was evening now and the lake shone, early moonlight reflecting off it’s surface. At the other end, the castle stood solid against the rapidly darkening sky, pinpricks of light glinting from dozens of windows in the walls and towers.

Hagrid led all of the first year students to massive front doors and then knocked heavily on them.

Very slowly, the doors creaked open.

“Professor McGonagall,” Hagrid said respectfully to the tall, severe looking witch standing just inside. “The new firs’ years.”

“So I see. Thank you Hagrid.”

Harry instinctively swallowed as Professor McGonagall took stock of the new students and her gaze passed over him

_Definitely not to be messed with,_ he thought.

“What now?” he whispered to Ron as they followed the professor down the hallway.

“Some sort of test, I think,” Ron whispered back. “Fred and George always told me we had to fight a troll, but I’m sure they were just kidding.” He paused. “Fairly sure, anyway.”

* * *

They discovered in short order that Ron’s older brothers _had_ been kidding and while Ron tried not to be sick with relief, Harry watched as names were called and one by one students sat on a stool and put on a hat which after some consideration, shouted out the name of whichever house they now belonged to. The time the hat decided varied from student to student. Draco Malfoy had barely touched the hat by the time it screamed, ‘Slytherin!’. Hermione Granger was sorted equally quickly into Gryffindor. The toad-boy on the other hand, whose name was Neville, was nearly on the stool for a full three minutes before the hat roared ‘Gryffindor!’

Eventually, it was Harry’s turn.

“Not Slytherin, not Slytherin,” whispered Harry desperately as around the hall people excitedly whispered his name.

“Not Slytherin, eh?” whispered the voice of the hat. “Why not? You’ve got cunning, ambition, drive. You could be great in Slytherin, oh yes.”

All Harry could think of was Malfoy.

_They were **our** sort of people, weren’t they?_

_I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same._

_All my family have been in Slytherin._

_If you’re not careful you’ll end up the same way as your parents._

_“_Is that what you told him?” he whispered to the hat.

“Hrrm,” grunted the hat. “No, it is not. I see your point. Well, if you’re sure . . .”

“Yes,” insisted Harry.

“Well, then . . . Gryffindor!”

As the hat’s words echoed around the hall, the Gryffindor table exploded with noise. Each student had been cheered as they joined their new house, but Harry’s new house-mates seemed determined to outdo all previous efforts. The Weasley twins were especially vocal.

Harry took his seat at the Gryffindor table, half-staggering with relief and the sorting went on. To Harry and Ron’s mutual relief, Ron was duly sorted into Gryffindor. “Well that was fun,” he said faintly as he slid into the chair next to Harry’s and his brothers clapped him on the back. “What now?”

Harry didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the man who had just quietly entered the hall and taken a seat at the far edge of the professors table.

“Hey Harry,” said George.

“Isn’t that-“ began Fred.

“ – Mr Fell?” they chorused together.


	19. The Feast

_‘My attempt to control the creature I had summoned failed, not through any oversight on my own part, but from the interference of my foolish neighbour, Esra of Essex. He has long fancied himself a rival to my magical power, but in truth he is but a doddering idiot. Now, through his carelessness, the circle is broken and the creature is free to roam as it wills. No doubt it will soon cause great affliction to many poor unfortunate souls. Truly, if not for Esra’s foolish meddling I could have turned the creature’s power to saintly ends and gained my just reward . .’ _

  * Extract translated from the singed remains of the wizard Thibault of Gascony’s personal journal. c.1406 AD. Recovered following the accidental fire which burned his tower to the ground.

* * *

From a perch high above in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, out of sight of all the humans, a snake with shining black and red scales watched with interest as Hogwarts’ first years were sorted into their school houses.

It was a curious little ritual, Crowley thought. How did the hat know where each child would fit best? Some kind of personality judgement, like its funny little song claimed? How would that work? The Hat would have to be able to-

Crowley hissed, curling his serpentine body around some convenient stonework in agitation as the implications sank in.

_Oh. Oh Someone, you’ve got to be kidding me._

The Hat was mind reading the eleven-year-olds.

Mind reading _Harry._

He tasted the air with his tongue, trying get a better scent than the thick cloying disgust that had just filled the back of his throat.

Crowley was a demon. Sensing the baser emotions in humans went with the territory and in the last six-thousand years it was an ability that had served him well and allowed him to pull off some truly spectacular stunts while on Hell’s payroll. But he’d never been like other demons – Duke Hastur, and the late, unlamented Ligur for example – who had dug into their targets heads to pick through their innermost thoughts. All Crowley had ever needed was an indication of someone’s general mood and his own intelligence to come up with a scheme that would gently tip his target towards further tarnish on their usually already somewhat soiled soul. No digging around in the psyche required.

As for mind reading children, with their bright, developing, questioning minds and their innocent ignorance of true evil . . .

_Urgh. No_.

Crowley hissed again, furious at the ridiculously casual use of one of the most dangerous magics known to man. Mind reading kids just to sort them into dormitories. What idiot had come up with that idea? The blasted hat might as well be Hastur.

Well. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, Crowley conceded, calming slightly. Most likely the hat was only picking up very surface level things. But still, first day at school and they went straight to the mind-reading?

Crowley was definitely going to have _words_ with that hat. Just in case it had picked up anything it shouldn’t be talking about to a certain twinkly-eyed wizard pillock.

_“Bloody_ magess,” he hissed to himself, curling tighter around the stonework. From the look of the little ceremony they’d clearly been doing it for decades.

_Urgh. Couldn’t they just use alphabetical order like everyone else? _

Crowley curled tighter, using the back of his own body as a headrest. Then, just as he was sure the day could hold no more unpleasant surprises, something else caught his attention.

_Wait, are those GHOSTS? _

* * *

Hogwarts had ghosts, food that appeared from nowhere, a literal forbidden forest, and according to the headmaster going anywhere near the third floor would lead to a messy painful death.

All of this was quite important information, but Harry was barely paying any attention to it. 

What he _was_ paying attention to was Aziraphale. Harry’s stout white-haired guardian was currently sat at the professors table next to a tall, sour-faced man.

Headmaster Dumbledore, (with what some might say was a put-upon expression), had introduced Aziraphale to the school as ‘Mr Ezra Fell, an expert magical archivist here for the year to help us update and organise the Library Catalogue’. There had been polite welcoming applause and then the headmaster had gone on to introduce a squirrely man in an absurd looking purple turban as the new Defence Against The Dark Arts professor, finally concluding with some exceedingly odd remarks, conducting the students through an enthusiastic rendition of the school song and inviting everyone to get started on their dinners.

It was an invitation that Harry was unsurprised to see Aziraphale accept immediately. No one else Harry had ever met really _appreciated_ food the way Aziraphale did.

“So,” Ron asked, as Harry dug into his own dinner, “I’m guessing you didn’t know your guardian was going to be here?”

Harry swallowed a mouthful of potato. “No,” he admitted. “They didn’t tell me.”

“Maybe they wanted it to be a surprise,” Ron suggested. “D’you reckon your Mr. Crowley is here too? The headmaster didn’t mention him.”

“Dunno,” Harry said. He thought about it. “Probably, if Az- _Ezra _really is here for the whole year.”

“Oh excellent,” said one of Ron’s twin brothers. Harry couldn’t tell if it was Fred or George.

“Brilliant,” agreed the other enthusiastically.

Harry stared at them for a long moment. “What did he do to you two?” he asked at last.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Not to _us_, anyway.”

Harry gave the twins another long look and then shook his head. He’d just ask Crowley about it later, he thought, sure by now that if Aziraphale really was going to be Library Archivist for the whole year, then Crowley was bound to be around as well. He glanced up at Aziraphale again and their eyes met.

Aziraphale winked.

A knot of tension that had been sitting in Harry’s stomach since he’d woken up that morning abruptly dissolved and he grinned back at Aziraphale, who had now returned his attention to his plate.

Curious, Harry eyed the other people at the professors table. There was Professor Dumbledore, whose eyes twinkled at Harry in a kindly manner. Beside him was the stern Professor McGonagall, the head of Harry’s new school House. Next to her was Hagrid the groundskeeper, who beamed at Harry and gave him a none-too-subtle thumbs up. There was also a thin woman in half-moon spectacles who was regarding Aziraphale with utter loathing. She looked vaguely familiar and Harry finally placed her as someone he’d met with Aziraphale at an auction for rare books. Ms Pinn, he thought she’d said her name was.

The last person Harry looked at was the sour faced man sitting next to Aziraphale, from whom he encountered such a look of sneering disgust that he flinched back in his chair. 

Harry turned to one of the Weasley twins. “Um, hey, uh . . .” Harry trailed off, not wanting to admit he couldn’t remember which twin he was speaking to.

“George,” said George Weasley, taking pity. “I’m the handsome one.” He motioned to his identical brother. “Unlike this poor unfortunate. Uglier than a bag of toads, poor devil.”

“Ignore him, Harry,” interjected Fred. “It’s all projection on his part, you know. It’s well known that I’m the best looking one. Why, when the midwife handed that one to our poor mother, she took one look at his face and fainted dead away.”

“That,” said Percy Weasley, entering the conversation with a sniff, “was because the midwife overdid the anaesthetic spell. In any case you’re both awful. Did you have a question Harry?”

“Yes,” said Harry quickly as the twins glowered at Percy in unison. “That professor sitting next to- to Ezra. Who is he?”

All the Weasleys, now including Ron, followed Harry’s gaze, impending family row forgotten. The twins winced and Percy’s expression became a complicated mixture of respect and dislike. “Professor Snape,” the oldest Weasley said at last. “He’s the potions master. He’s very good, really knows his stuff.”

“Favours the Slytherins like mad though,” said Fred. “Students from other houses can’t do anything without him taking loads of points away-“

“- but the Slytherins get away with murder,” finished George. “He’s their Head of House.”

“Creepy looking git,” said Ron. “Looks almost ready to murder someone.”

“You don’t know the half of it, ickle Ronnikins,” said Fred, earning a death-glare from Ron.

“Right,” agreed George. “Everyone knows Snape’s been after the Defense Against The Dark Arts seat for years. That’s the job he really wants. Honestly I don’t give much for Professor Quirrell’s chances of holding onto it.”

Fred nodded. “He looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Five knuts says he’s gone by the end of the year.”

“Mum disapproves of gambling,” Percy said primly. “Besides,” he added, “there’s no point betting against a certainty. None of the DADA professors ever last.”

* * *

Severus Snape eyed the Potter boy with dislike. The child was the spitting image of the late James Potter. The same wiry frame, the same untidy hair and unless he missed his guess, equally as much a spoiled brat. What else could you call a boy who fled from his stupid uncle over a no doubt trifling quarrel and then conned a pair of soft old idiots into thinking he was some poor homeless waif. There didn’t seem to be anything of Lily in the boy at all.

Of course, Professor Dumbledore hadn’t quite described the situation like that, but Severus had no illusions about it. He’d seen at once that his neighbouring diner was exactly the kind to be taken in by an apparently innocent face and probably some ridiculous sob story as well. He hadn’t met the man’s partner yet but according to the headmaster he was a gardener of some kind who was going to be assisting Professor Sprout with her more aggressive specimens. Severus already had a mental impression of a grey-haired, slightly less plump version of Fell and no doubt he was of similar disposition, another doddering old fool who couldn’t see a brat taking advantage of his kindness.

Severus noticed the Potter boy staring rudely at him and glared back at the brat, rather pleased when Potter flinched and looked elsewhere.

His pleased feelings did not last long. A few minutes later, Hogwarts’ new addition to the staff reached for a jug of gravy and somehow miscalculated his retrieval of it in such a way as to dump hot brown liquid directly into Severus’ lap.

“Good gracious!” Fell flapped his hands in innocent dismay. “My dear fellow, I do apologise!”

“It’s fine,” Severus grated out as the hot liquid destroyed his pristine robes and caused his nether regions to file a strong complaint. “No harm done,” he assured Fell icily, while groping for his wand in order to clean up. The man was giving him a doe-eyed look of contrition that was annoyingly sincere.

If it had been anyone else, pointed and cutting remarks about clumsiness would have been even now falling from the potion master’s lips. But the headmaster had been extremely firm when discussing the new additions to Hogwarts staff with him. Severus’ usual manner towards idiotic behaviour was absolutely forbidden. It was all very suspicious and made Severus dislike the archivist even more. He hoped fervently that the man would confine himself to the Library as much as possible, where Madam Pince would no doubt tear him into increasing piles of shreds.

Irma Pince looked ready to start shredding now as a matter of fact. Severus suspected that she resented the interloper considerably and silently wished her luck in the oncoming battle.

Finally locating his wand, he cast a cleaning charm with considerable relief- And then frowned when nothing happened but a slight fizzle at the end of his wand. His robes continued to drip obstinately with gravy.

And to think, he’d only got this wand last year. Bloody Ollivander! He _knew_ the thing had been over-priced!

* * *

A small knot of Gryffindors (and indeed various students from the other house tables) watched with interest as Professor Snape attempted without success to get gravy off of his robes.

“Did that really just happen?” asked Fred Weasley in a reverent voice.

“I dunno,” replied his twin, equally reverent. “I think we might be having a shared dream.”

“Who is he again?” asked a boy with dreadlocks further down the table. “I didn’t hear what the Headmaster said.”

“Library archivist, Mr Fell, Harry’s stepdad or guardian or whatever. Right, Harry?” replied a short first-year boy who then introduced himself as Seamus Finnegan. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing.”

“Harry, I love your stepdad,” said a pretty dark-haired girl before Harry could reply.

“Er,” said Harry, suddenly unable to get words out. It felt very odd to hear Aziraphale described that way.

“Angelina!” protested one of the twins in mock-dismay, “ I thought I was the only man for you!”

“Not anymore, Fred,” retorted Angelina. “I have high standards. You’ve never dumped gravy on Professor Snape.”

“Not for lack of trying, though,” a girl beside her added thoughtfully.

“Thank you Katie,” said Fred, with great dignity. “It’s nice to be appreciated. Still, I will admit that we’ve been outclassed.”

“True,” agreed George, “but I think Snape’s going to spend the rest of the year trying to murder him. So _briefly_ outclassed.”

“Did they know each other as students?” someone else asked. “Snape might have tried to kill him before. You never know.”

“Can’t have,” said another Gryffindor reasonably. “Snape’s got to be fifteen years younger at least. They won’t have been in the Castle at the same time. I wonder what House he was in?”

“He, um, he didn’t go to Hogwarts,” Harry managed to say. “Ezra,” -the alias was coming a little easier now – “was home-schooled.”

“Well, he’s your dad,” said the girl called Katie. “So he’s practically a Gryffindor. Don’t worry about Professor Snape trying to kill him, we’ll look out for him.”

There was a sudden silence, and Harry could _feel_ the entire table suddenly remembering a significant fact they’d overlooked. Katie had gone pale with embarrassed horror.

“Thanks,” said Harry quickly, grinning at Katie as if nothing was wrong. “Maybe keep an eye out if he goes near the lake? I don’t know if Ezra can swim.”

Katie gave Harry the most grateful look he’d ever received. “No need to worry about that,” she said. “I can do a floating charm in my sleep.”

“Really?” asked Hermione Granger enthusiastically. “When are we going to learn those?” She proceeded to pepper Katie with questions about schoolwork and the awkward moment vanished. The Gryffindor table once again became full of loud and cheerful conversations that continued without anymore interruptions until the end of the feast.

* * *

“Ghosts,” muttered Crowley that night as they sat together in the quarters that Aziraphale had been provided with. “Mind reading hats and bloody ghosts. I can’t believe this place.”

“One of them is on the teaching staff,” said Aziraphale mildly as Crowley swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. He sighed when it was subsequently sprayed across the room. “Oh Crowley, really!”

Crowley ignored him. “They have a ghost _teaching_?” he demanded.

“Professor Binns. Professor of History of Magic. I believe he got up to teach one morning several decades ago and didn’t realise he’d left his body behind.”

The air filled with several colourful phrases as Crowley vented his feelings.

“Are you finished?” Aziraphale asked, after some minutes had passed.

“I suppose so,” Crowley said grumpily. “Someone damn it, angel, you know how I feel about ghosts.”

“Yes and to an extent I do agree.”

“Well I mean, you do all that work, carefully tarnishing-“

“Or saving.”

“Or in your case saving – a perfectly bad-“

“Or good.”

“Or good soul, yeah. And then they die and you think you’ll get a better performance review this quarter. _Then_ it turns out they’ve stayed on earth and all your hard work was for nothing. And then you have to chase them down and do an exorcism which is always a messy business, ectoplasm all over the shoes, every time. Ugh. Individual craftsmanship, my arse. You know, the day I figured out mass-tarnishing was one of the best days of my life?”

“Yes dear, I remember how pleased you were.”

“Anyway,” said Crowley, suddenly levering himself out of his seat and circling towards the angel, “enough about ghosts. Did you enjoy dinner? And what was all that business with the gravy?”

“Oh, you noticed that?”

“Bit hard to miss, angel. You don’t usually waste good food.”

“Yes, that was regrettable,” admitted Aziraphale. “But it was all in a good cause.”

“Really?” drawled Crowley. “Dumping steaming gravy in a man’s lap and then sabotaging his wand. How, pray tell?”

Aziraphale’s expression became serious, the six-thousand year old lines deepening. “You didn’t feel it then?”

Crowley stared at him. The last time he’d seen that expression on Aziraphale’s face he’d been holding a sword at the End Of The World. “Feel what?”

“There is something wrong here,” Aziraphale said slowly. “I felt it at dinner. Just for a moment. I almost thought I imagined it, but then I felt it again. Something very, very wrong.” He paused and Crowley could see that his eyes were the colour of arctic ice. “Wrong like that shard in Harry’s head.”

Crowley resisted with difficulty the urge to hiss. “You think he’s here. In the castle?” He spun towards the door, intending to go straight to Harry, but was forestalled by Aziraphale’s grip on his arm.

“I think part of him _may_ be here,” the angel said. “I could be wrong. There is so much human magic in this place, soaked into the very stones. So much emanating from all those young mages. It makes it hard to get a clear picture. But it did feel . . . close.”

“Ah,” said Crowley as the light dawned. “So you gave the nearest unpleasant mage a bit of a shock.”

“It seemed the most expedient way,” the angel shrugged.

“And sabotaging his wand?”

“Oh that was just because I didn’t like the way he was glaring at the children. Some people really should think before entering a profession unsuited to them.”


	20. First Lessons

_After the murder of the vicar and the disappearance of his young niece, suspicion quickly fell on one Tony Crowleigh, an outsider from London who was visiting the area. Locals described him as a queer fellow (used in the old sense of the world, rather than the modern connotation – although, the former should not be ruled out as it would have been another reason for people to turn on an outsider at the time) and as he could provide no alibi for the time of death, he was duly imprisoned to await trial._

_Crowleigh protested his innocence vehemently and by all accounts treated the accusation as if he had been rudely insulted at a party rather than accused of a capital crime. At all events, the accusation became moot when the constable, arriving at his lock-up the morning after to provide the accused man with his breakfast, found that he had vanished from his cell. The doors were locked and bolted and no evidence of the locks being tampered with was ever found._

_The generally held theory is that Crowleigh, a notably slim man, had slid through the window bars in the manner of a contortionist. This is unlikely given that however svelte the man his head at least, would have provided a challenge when faced with the bars. However, no other theory has ever fully explained Crowleigh’s miraculous disappearance. The vicar’s niece was never found and it was assumed that she too had been murdered by Crowleigh. When questioned the evening before he vanished, the last thing Crowleigh reportedly told the constable was not to worry as the girl was ‘safe with my angel’._

_These days, children in Little Hopping are still warned to behave or Slim Tony will appear during the night and make off with them, never to be seen again._

_-Strange & Supernatural: Unexplained Mysteries in Great Britain. 1989_

* * *

Harry’s first few days at Hogwarts were, while not as completely mind-boggling as they might have been in another universe, still rather overwhelming. For the first time in his life, everywhere he looked there were people like him. All of the other Gryffindor first years had tales of their own bouts of accidental magic and many of Harry’s classmates had been just as ignorant about the existence of the magical world as Harry for the last ten years. To his own surprise, for the first time since he could remember, Harry felt almost normal.

Almost.

He was still the Boy-Who-Lived, Official Saviour of the Wizarding World. From the night of the welcome feast on, Harry could hear the whispers and feel the stares of the other students. They didn’t bother him that much – his previous experience of schoolmates whispering about him was a lot more negative and usually involved Dudley – but it made him grateful for the solid dependable presence of Ron Weasley, who could be counted on to turn and glare in the whisperer’s direction, until said whispering ceased. This was less effective on the older students of course, but Harry appreciated the effort.

There were, of course, some advantages to having spent the last month or so in A Z Fell & Co. Professor McGonagall’s transformation from woman to cat, for instance, was impressive but less than unique to someone who lived in a building that also contained one Anthony J. Crowley.

(Harry had once asked what the J stood for. His insistence that the letter had to stand for _something_ had amused Crowley no end. For almost a week Harry had run through all the names starting with J that he could think of. Eventually he’d given up when his last suggestion of ‘Janthony’ had reduced Crowley to indeterminate hissing noises for a full five minutes, followed by the man transforming into a snake and hiding under Aziraphale’s armchair.)

His nights curled up on the sofa with his schoolbooks had also paid off. More often than not the first week, Hermione Granger’s was not the only hand in the air when a teacher asked a tricky question. And when it came to astronomy class, Harry outstripped even Hermione. There was little in the first-year astronomy curriculum that Harry, (the only human alive with a supernaturally accurate re-creation of the constellations on his bedroom ceiling), didn’t already know.

Even so, the sheer amount of magic use was hard to get used to. Though Harry had grown slightly used to Aziraphale and Crowley using magic when they needed to, or it suited them, both of his guardians still did quite a lot in what Harry was beginning to think of as ‘the muggle way’. Crowley might yell his plants into frightened submission, but he still got his hands dirty when re-potting them. Aziraphale too, preferred to fix the damaged spines of books with needles and thread rather than a click of his fingers, and of course he always made his cocoa at the kitchen hob, warming up the milk in a small saucepan.

At Hogwarts, magic was everywhere Harry looked. The staircases moved, the pictures talked, and a poltergeist bounced around the halls. Breakfast, lunch and dinner appeared out of thin air with no hint as to where it had been cooked. Harry found that he began to look forward to the end of the day when it was time to curl up in his grand four-poster bed in Gryffindor tower and shut out the too-colourful world around him.

It was almost as good as being back in his own bedroom at the bookshop. He did miss his stars though.

* * *

It was not long before Severus Snape was forced to admit that his mental image of Professor Sprout’s new part-time assistant had been completely off the mark. The Friday morning before his first scheduled class with the Gryffindor and Slytherin first years, he decided to make one last trip to the Professor Sprout’s domain to stock up on extra supplies. By default first years always went through a larger amount of ingredients than other classes and he’d found over the years that it paid to be prepared.

So he rose early and before breakfast made his way towards the elaborate glasses buildings that had for decades been the source of the Potions professors’ stores.

It was as he rounded the corner of one of the greenhouses that Severus first heard the unfamiliar low, menacing tones. Instinctively, he edged behind a pile of boxes filled with gardening paraphernalia and went quite still. In his experience a little eavesdropping nearly always paid off.

“Look,” hissed the unseen greenhouse occupant. “It’s been very easy here. You’re all used to Professsor Ssprout being ssoft on you.” The voice paused. “Not,” it said in a fair-minded tone, the hiss lightening, “that she isn’t doing a good job. Very accomplished botanist. Really knows her stuff.”

The voice paused again, and when it spoke the menacing tone was back.

“But you’ve all gotten used to having your every whim catered to! Being sspoiled! But no more. I’m here now and I expect perffection. Only the besst behaviour, is that clear?”

There was a vague rustling sound.

“I said, iss that _clear_?”

The rustling sound increased in volume.

“Good,” hissed the voice, with evil satisfaction. “Remember, behave well and I may be merciful. If not, well, there’ss alwayss the composst.”

Severus, remaining quite still behind his pile of boxes, tried to make sense of the one-sided conversation. There was only one adult in the castle whose voice he did not recognise. So this must be Fell’s partner, the gardener. Was he . . . threatening someone? It certainly sounded that way. But who?

A student, Severus realised. It had to be a student. The conversation made no sense otherwise.

Severus started to edge out of his hiding place. He was not normally opposed to students being informed that there was such a thing as standards, but the Gravy Incident was still fresh in his mind and the opportunity to get back at Fell through his partner was too good to pass up. Besides, the man was a gardening assistant, not a teacher. It wasn’t his place to interfere with student discipline.

Severus took a breath and smiled grimly. Then he strode through the greenhouse door.

There was no student.

Neither was there the grey-haired slightly taller version of Fell from Severus’ imagination.

There was only a tall slim man somewhere in his late forties, with bright red hair down to his shoulders. He was dressed in a light jacket, dungarees and wellingtons, all of which were coal black. A black band was keeping his hair back out of his eyes, which were hidden by a pair of annoyingly stylish sunglasses. His face, despite the definite lines of rapidly approaching middle age, still retained a boyishly handsome look.

“Hal-lo,” the man said cheerfully, grinning widely at Severus. “We haven’t met yet, have we?” He stuck out a friendly hand. “Anthony J Crowley.”

Severus regarded it, lip curling. “Professor Severus Snape,” he said coldly.

“Oh right,” said Anthony Crowley with a laugh in his voice. “You’re the one Ezra covered in pepper sauce, aren’t you?” he asked, as if he and Severus were old friends sharing a joke. His aggravatingly charming grin displayed very white teeth.

Not since his initial meeting with the late James Potter and the unfortunately un-late Sirius Black had Severus Snape loathed someone so very much.

“It was gravy,” he snapped.

“Oh yes, so it was.” The man continued to smile widely. “Hope you’re not bearing a grudge?”

“Of course not,” Severus said through gritted teeth. “Accidents happen.”

The dungarees-wearing cross between Sirius Black and the Weasley Twins beamed at him. “They do, don’t they. Now, anything I can help you with, or are you just here to admire the plants?”

“Don’t put yourself to trouble,” Severus said coldly. “I’m collecting supplies for the potions stores. First years tend toward an inordinate amount of waste.”

“Oh, you teach first-years?”

Severus gave the gardener a short nod. “For my sins,” he said, smiling thinly.

To his great irritation, the man grinned at him again, apparently delighted. “You’ll have my boy in your class this morning then. His name’s Harry.”

With difficulty, Severus resisted the urge to grimace, old familiar bitterness filling his mouth. “I take it you are referring to Mr. Potter? Our new . . . celebrity.”

Nothing in Crowley’s bearing or expression changed in the slightest, but Severus had the sudden impression that the eyes behind those stylish sunglasses were regarding him as someone who owns a restaurant would regard a cockroach making an appearance in a plate of salad that had just been served to the world’s severest food critic.

“That’s right,” the gardener said slowly. “Not exactly the word I’d have chosen to describe him though.”

“Really?” Severus asked, deciding to get it over with. No doubt the man was bursting to tell him how brilliant he thought the boy was. “How would you describe his fame then?”

“Disturbingly morbid,” said Crowley with a bluntness that caught the potions master off-guard. He hadn’t expected to _agree_ with this man on anything. “Kid’s only famous because he didn’t die. What a thing to be known for, eh?”

For the first time, Severus felt a kernel of interest in the redhaired gardener and his clumsy partner. “There are some who see him as the saviour of our world,” he said, carefully neutral.

Anthony J Crowley snorted, all traces of his earlier smiles now vanished, and mimicked a journalist with a microphone. “Oh yes? How about an autograph, Harry? What are your thoughts on the political situation? Tell us about the time your mother was brutally murdered in front of you? Was it before or after her twenty-first birthday?”

Severus flinched, feeling as if he’d been struck a blow right in the solar plexus.

_Lily._

She’d been so young. It was still a shock to hear it spelled out like that. She’d married James _bloody_ Potter right after leaving school and before he’d known it they’d had the boy, _in the middle of a war, what had she been thinking . . ._

_And then, and then . . ._

He could still see her in his mind’s eye. All her warmth and passion drained. Nothing left but cold, lifeless remains.

The grief and guilt, still bound up with his hatred of James Potter, welled up within him. So did the desire to be literally anywhere else. “If you’ll excuse me,” he managed in a reasonable approximation of calm, “I need to be getting those supplies.”

As he left, Severus could swear he felt the gardener’s gaze on him, though when he risked turning his head, all the man seemed to be doing was gesturing vehemently at a plant as if it had personally insulted him.

The plant was shaking violently. Which was unusual, because it was a calm day with not even a hint of a breeze.

* * *

Back in the castle, Kingsley Shacklebolt, who had just been informed of the school’s newest hires, was resisting the urge to gape at the headmaster of Hogwarts.

_Are you kidding me?_ he wanted to shout. _We went to all that trouble, Moody was delirious for two weeks, he still isn’t back to what passes for normal and after all that, you just decided to invite them to Hogwarts as staff? You’re _employing_ them?_

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled, as if he could hear all of the unvoiced words and found them amusing.

Shacklebolt contemplated murder for a few moments before regretfully shelving the idea.

Of course, he told himself, he had the greatest respect for Albus Dumbledore. There had been more than one occasion during the war when only the headmaster’s intervention had saved the lives of Shacklebolt’s friends and family. It was just that ever since Harry Potter’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance with a pair of practically unknown wizards, Dumbledore’s decisions had made even less sense than usual.

“Are you serious?” he asked eventually. “They’re here? Teaching?”

“Assisting,” Dumbledore clarified. “Mr Crowley is helping Professor Sprout with some more recalcitrant specimens in her greenhouses and Mr Fell is doing a badly needed inventory of the library catalogue.”

Shacklebolt winced. He vividly remembered Madam Pince’s possessive protectiveness of Hogwarts’ library books from his own schooldays. “And how is that going for him?”

“Remarkably well, apparently. I confess, I’ve not seen Madam Pince so genuinely baffled in many years. Every time she insists that she cannot find a book he requests, it seems to appear exactly where he looks a minute later.”

“Impressive,” Shacklebolt allowed. “But Professor, given their unusual reputations and abilities, don’t you think it’s dangerous to bring them here?”

“Do _you_ think they’re a danger?” Dumbledore asked in lieu of a reply.

Shacklebolt opened his mouth to say _of course, _and then stopped, thinking about the question. “Not to the children,” he said at last, after several minutes though. “Their reputations among the muggles suggest exactly the opposite. I did go digging for more information from my contact in the muggle police after the incident in Tadfield. They’ve never harmed a child, not that I could find.”

“Indeed.”

“But still,“ Shacklebolt protested. “What they did to Moody-“

“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “They did do that. But I am not entirely sure it was on purpose. Alastor’s Eye is a great triumph of magical engineering, but it is, hmm, a little too good sometimes.” The headmaster stroked his beard, considering his next words. “I suspect he saw something that no human should have.”

Shacklebolt stared. Finally, he said, “what _are_ they?”

Dumbledore shrugged. “I have no idea. My initial guess was rather wide of the mark. I have been conducting my own research in other areas than muggle police records. As yet, my findings are interesting, but inconclusive.”

“And you still think it’s a good idea for them to be here?”

“As a matter of fact,” Dumbledore admitted candidly, “they didn’t leave me with much choice.”

“They . . . threatened you?” Shacklebolt didn’t try to hide the disbelief in his tone. What kind of person had the nerve to threaten Albus Dumbledore – and be taken seriously?

“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore happily. “Mr Fell stated quite clearly that if anything happened to Harry because of me, he would snap me in half.”

“What-“ Shacklebolt began and then stopped when the headmaster reached behind his desk and produced something that after a moment, he recognised as a crowbar.

It had been bent double.

Dumbledore beamed at the shocked Auror. “He was considerate enough to provide me with a visual aid.”

* * *

Later that same morning the Gryffindor and Slytherin first years trooped into Professor Snape’s Dungeon classroom for their first potions lesson. Ron and Harry took seats next to one another and waited as one by one, the professor called the student’s names and marked them present. When he reached Harry’s name, there was the tiniest of pauses and Harry found himself the focus of Professor Snape’s piercing gaze. He remembered the man’s glare from the night of the welcome feast and tried to gaze back steadily.

After a long moment, Professor Snape looked away and called out the next name on his list.

“Why do I feel like something weird just happened?” Ron whispered.

“Weasley!” snapped Professor Snape before Harry could even shrug in reply. “Five points from Gryffindor for talking in class!”


End file.
